Obscurus Lupa: The Sagacious Saga
by GigaBob
Summary: The long-awaited sequel to the "acclaimed" story Obscurus Lupa Wins The Olympics! Lupa and Phelous find themselves stuck on a strange but familiar planet, where they become involved in a war that threatens to destroy more than just their home...
1. Chapter 1

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: For an alternate version of this story with commentary, check out my blog. The link's in my profile.)

A distinct whirring sound pierced the silence of the dawn. A dozen or so cows lazily walked away as a small blue box materialized on top of their grazing land.

The door of the blue box opened, and out stepped Allison Pregler, better known as Obscurus Lupa. Following her was her significant other, Phelan Porteous, aka Phelous. They stepped onto the meadow as the planet's first sun peeked above the horizon; the second sun was already high in the sky.

"Nice place, don't you think?" Lupa said.

"I suddenly have a hatred for binary star systems." Phelous said sarcastically. "At least this one isn't tidally locked like the other planet. I can't sleep in daylight."

Lupa deeply inhaled the fresh morning air, exhaling with a satisfying sigh. "I love the smell of the morning."

"You know, this is a cattle pasture. If this weren't a crappy fanfic, it'd smell like cowabunga sheeeeeat!"

"But fortunately for me, I'm a grossly-exaggerated fanfic Mary Sue and every part of my life is perfect." Lupa picked an exotic rainbow flower off the ground, and handed it to Phelous. "See? Rainbow flowers!"

"You know, near the end of Obscurus Lupa Wins The Olympics, you became an infinitely-powerful God Mode Sue. But of course, you completely forgot about your powers, and now due to narrative convenience, you've lost most of them." Phelous stuck the rainbow flower in his shirt pocket. "And I have no idea why I'm here. I'm just the author's way of inserting an unfunny running commentary on his own fic. You don't do MSTs of your own work, GigaBob!"

"Yeah, but I love you anyways."

Lupa and Phelous lied down on the (conveniently cowpie-free) meadow, watching the sun rise.

"So where are we anyways?" Phelous asked.

"Hell if I know." Lupa said. "But it's nice here, isn't it?"

"Like I said, I have an inexplicable hatred for binary star systems, but otherwise, yeah it's nice."

"Yeah, but I could use some food." Lupa got up and stepped into their TARDIS; a few minutes later, she came back out, empty-handed.

"Are we out of food again?"

"Yep." Lupa made a sadly. "What do you think? Should we butcher those cows and roast them over an open fire?"

"I don't think the person who owns them would like that. Why don't we advance the plot and go ask that person, whoever they are, for some food?" Phelous suggested.

"Okay, sounds good."

Lupa and Phelous walked over to the settlement in the distance. It was an almost stereotypical farm, with a log cabin and bright red barn in front of rows upon rows of cornstalks. Oddly enough, the farm seemed to be abandoned; besides the cows, they didn't see anyone or anything else.

"Breaking and entering?" Lupa said.

"Breaking and entering." Phelous said. The door to the house was unlocked; they both cautiously stepped in. No old men with shovels assaulted them, which was probably a good sign, but the house had the unmistakable stench of death.

They stepped into the kitchen, which, to their surprise, looked pretty modern, with modern appliances and the like. Sitting at the table was a half-rotted corpse.

"That's pretty nasty." Lupa said. She got the feeling that she should be more disturbed by this, but killing dozens of ninjas every day had kinda desensitized her.

Phelous peeked in the fridge, but closed it just as quickly. All of the food had long since gone rotten.

"Looks like we've got a murder mystery on our hands!" Lupa announced. "Come on Watson, let's get on the case!"

"No thanks. I'm going back to the TARDIS."

"Aw, come on!" Lupa pleaded.

"Fine..."

They investigated the second floor, but nothing seemed out of place - save for another rotting corpse dressed in a white nightgown. But there didn't appear to be any signs of a struggle - it's almost like they just died one day, and no one noticed.

Then, they checked the basement. A demonic scream assailed them as soon as Lupa opened the door - a malformed dog-like creature pounced on her, but she punched it through a wall. It jumped at them again, but Phelous melted its head away with his eye lasers.

"Whaaaaa?" Lupa said, obviously confused.

"It's a Canadian thing." Phelous said.

They continued into the basement. But just like the rest of the house, nothing seemed to be out of place. Even that demon dog hadn't made a mess of things, even though it was seemingly locked down here for god knows how long. Lupa did however notice something out of place - a comma-shaped hunk of yellow glass resting on a table.

"This thing looks suspicious." Lupa said. "Hmm, maybe I can combine it with this string and a moldy mushroom..."

"You can't use those things together." Phelous commented.

"Oh. How about a nail from that dog and a $5 bill?"

"You can't use those things together."

"Then what am I supposed to do with it, huh?"

"This." Phelous took the amber relic from Lupa and threw it against the wall, shattering it. Unfortunately, that was a bad idea; as soon as it shattered, the ground started to shake.

Lupa and Phelous scrambled up the stairs and out the front door. The entire house collapsed, and a fissure opened in the earth, swallowing the remains. They tried making their way back to the TARDIS, but they were blocked by something else; a huge circular hole opened in front of them, and a gigantic monster emerged from it.

The monster was little more than a mouth on legs; it opened its gigantic maw and roared, revealing rows upon rows of sharp teeth. It was almost entirely covered in red-black scales, and it was at least twenty times the size of either of them. The monster climbed out of the hole, which closed behind it; it stomped once on the ground, releasing an energy shockwave that knocked Phelous to his feet.

Lupa, however, jumped at the right time, dodging the shockwave. She used her super-speed to run up to the monster and sock it in the jaw; it roared in pain, but its scaly exterior absorbed most of the blow. It opened its mouth again and attempted to swallow Lupa whole, but she got out of there in the nick of time.

While dodging, she noticed a peculiar object lodged on top of the monster. At first glance, it appeared to be a stone spike of some sort, decorated in all sorts of arcane symbols. Lupa jumped up on the monster's back and drove the spike deep into the monster's head; it roared in pain as the spike released a holy aura that immobilized the monster, but only briefly. It shook off the holy aura, throwing Lupa to the ground at the same time.

Phelous got up. The monster roared at him, but he ran between the monster's legs and delivered a megaton punch to the monster's knee. It doubled over in pain, giving Phelous enough time to jump on its back; the sealing spike had been dislodged from the monster's back, but Phelous picked it up and kicked it deep into the monster's head, again releasing a holy aura that held it in place.

But the monster was far from finished. Its scales glowed a dark red, and it released a powerful energy wave that sent Phelous flying. Lupa caught him in midair, though, but as soon as they tried approaching the monster, it released another energy wave that sent them back.

"I think it's fastball special time." Lupa said. "I'll throw you at that spike thing, okay?"

"I didn't agree to that!" But it was too late: Lupa flung Phelous at the monster. It tried releasing another energy wave, but it was too slow - Phelous delivered a perfectly-aimed kick to the sealing spike. Thankfully, that was the last blow; the holy aura completely overwhelmed the monster, shattering it into billions of dark fragments which were subsequently absorbed into the spike.

"Woo, we did it!" Lupa cheered. But as soon as they turned their back, the sealing spike exploded, and the monster emerged from another dark hole in the ground.

"Thanks for jinxing it." Phelous said.

"I've got no choice." Lupa reached into her pocket and pulled out a Master Ball. "Come on, work!" She threw the Master Ball at the monster; to their surprise, the ball worked, successfully capturing and containing it.

"Woo, I caught a... thing!" Lupa said. "I'm gonna nickname it Sparklypoo."

"Why?" Phelous asked.

"Because it doesn't sound threatening. It's like, if someone comes up to me and says 'Imma beat you in a Pokemon battle', and I say 'Go, Sparklypoo!', they're gonna laugh until they realize it's a freakin hundred-foot-tall kaiju thing!"

"...Yeah, you go with that." Phelous said. "By the way, what'd you do with the TARDIS?"

"Huh? I didn't do anything with the-" Lupa looked over to the meadow where the TARDIS had materialized, but sure enough, it was gone.

"So we're stuck here. Wonderful." Phelous said, more annoyed than angry.

Lupa raised her hands to the sky and yelled "FFFFFFUUUUUUUUU-"


	2. Chapter 2

"FUCK! FUCK SHIT FUCK!" Lupa cursed loudly. Their TARDIS, the only way her and Phelous could get off this planet, was lost, or stolen, or god knows what. Sure, it'd been stolen before, but in that case, they knew exactly who stole it and how to get it back; in this case, it could've fallen into the earth, or that monster could've eaten it, or anything.

"It's okay, Lupa. I'm sure we'll find it eventually."

"But this is a fanfic! There doesn't have to be any continuity, or a status quo, or any goddamn logic! I just crammed a giant monster into a tiny ball, for god's sakes!"

"Yeah, that's true." Phelous thought back to the events of the previous series... "Wait, hang on. Didn't you capture the TARDIS in a Pokeball too?"

"I did..." Lupa checked her pockets; these particular pants had hammerspace pockets built in. "...But I left it in the TARDIS."

"Yeah, of course. We have to throw idiot balls around just to make this plot reasonable." Phelous grabbed the idiot ball hovering over his head and threw it away. "But seriously, what happened to your God Mode Sue powers?"

"I dunno." Lupa shrugged. "I just kinda lost them. All I've got left is enhanced strength, speed and flight, and I think I might be able to spit rainbows." She spat on the ground, staining a small patch of grass with all the colors of the rainbow.

"Wonderful. Well, I guess we should start heading for some semblance of civilization."

A couple of beefsteaks later, they started walking. Shortly after, they found a fairly large and important-looking river, which they followed downstream on the logic that it looked important (Phelous' genre savviness served as a radar for this sort of thing). They figured that at least one town would have to be built on or near the river, but it wasn't until the pleasant grasslands had first given way to arid bushlands, then full-fledged desert, that they found the first town.

It was a pretty generic-looking desert town, with buildings made of sandstone and all sorts of shady dealings going on at the bazaar in the town square. A massive six-sided pyramid loomed over the town, casting it in shadow as the main sun set; the second sun, which still hovered at the top of the sky, only cast enough light to keep the world in perpetual twilight.

"You know, Twilight's ruined the word 'twilight' for me. Now whenever I think of that word, I can't help but be reminded of sparkly vampires." Phelous complained. "But I'm totally not a mouthpiece for the also-Canadian author's views at all!"

"Sure you're not." Lupa said.

"Halt!" A man dressed head-to-toe in green linens brandished a long spear at them. "Do you work for Lord Electriceye?"

"Uh, no?" Lupa said hesitantly.

"Good! Welcome to the outlaw city of Shahrazad." The man lowered his spear and welcomed them in.

"That's my favorite game!" Phelous said. They took a stroll into the bazaar to purchase some more appropriate clothing - both of them had severe sunburn from walking in the desert in t-shirts and jeans. Fortunately for them, a familiar-looking merchant was carrying both appropriate outfits and magical healing ointment.

"How's it going, guys? Didn't expect to see you here." 8-Bit Mickey said. He too was dressed in a green linen robe, though his head was uncovered due to narrative convenience.

"8-Bit Mickey? What're you doing here?" Lupa asked.

"That's my line..." Phelous muttered.

"Well, as it turns out, a bunch of aliens invaded and took over Earth while you guys were away. Linkara loaded up as many people as he could on Comicron One, but most of us had to scatter throughout time and space to avoid capture." Mickey said.

"And there's our plot." Phelous said. "We have to get back to Earth to save everyone from their new alien overlords, but to do that we've gotta find the TARDIS, and to do that we'll have to do... well, something."

"You should come with us, Mickey!" Lupa said.

"Actually, I like my new life here. Back on Earth, I was 'the goat-fucker', but here, I'm a respected merchant! I actually have a chain of stalls all over the desert!" Mickey pointed to the sign above his tent, which read 'Mickey World: Fine Garments and Exposition since 20yAl'.

"Good to hear. So uh, have you heard anything about a mysterious blue box landing in anyone's possession around here?"

"Hmm... well, this is a city of outlaws, so we don't get a lot of outside news here. I'd head to Agrippa for information like that. Hey, GshRs!" Mickey waved to one of the other merchants, an insect-like entity that could be best described as a preying mantis' head and body with seven-fingered human-like arms, grafted to a seven-legged spider.

"What is it, Mickey?" To their surprise, GshRs spoke in completely understandable English, though he had a slight accent.

"These folks need a map to Agrippa. Can you provide one?" Mickey asked.

"Sure thing!" GshRs whipped out a piece of paper and a pencil, and in a few short moments, he'd drawn a map detailing the exact route to the city of Agrippa. He handed it to Lupa, who put it in her hammerspace pockets.

"And since I'm so nice, I'm gonna give you some stuff too." Mickey handed them each a set of green robes, several jars of ointment and some flasks of water.

"Thanks, Mickey. We'll pay you back next time we see you." Lupa said.

"Nah, don't worry about it. If you see anyone else from Channel Awesome, tell them I said hi."

Lupa and Phelous said their goodbyes and left, but Phelous stopped before they got too far.

"Huh, what's wrong?" Lupa asked.

"That." Phelous pointed to the pyramid. "This is a generic Egypt-analogue town, and that's a pyramid. And if I know my genre conventions, we're going to have to go in that pyramid."

"Uh, no we don't."

"Trust me on this. If we don't go into the pyramid, we'll be ambushed by desert raiders and end up back here, and we'll need an artifact from inside the pyramid to fend them off."

"Seriously man, this isn't a video game. Let's just keep going, and if raiders do abduct us or whatever, we'll just fight them off."

"We're going into the pyramid." Phelous started walking toward it.

"Ugh, fine, whatever." Lupa ran over to catch up with him.

Shortly after, they were in front of the pyramid. A massive stone slab blocked the entrance, but Phelous dealt with it by standing atop the four pillars scattered around the area. The stone door exploded for some reason, allowing them to venture in.

But to their surprise, the pyramid wasn't filled with random traps and pools of quicksand; hell, the main path didn't even have any branches. It just kept going forward at a slight incline. Eventually, they came across a ladder which led into a bright room above; they both climbed it, but as soon as both of them were in the room above, the ladder disintegrated and a bottomless pit opened underneath them.

The room they were in was made of mirrors. The light of the second sun shone right above them, through a shaft in the direct center of the pyramid. Another relic made of yellow glass, along with a blue amulet with water-like patterns on it, sat on a pedestal in the middle of the room.

"MacGuffin ho!" Phelous said. He grabbed the relic. "I'm thinking we shouldn't break this one."

"Yeah, probably a good idea." Lupa grabbed the amulet and put in on. "Well, this thing's apparently called the Amulet of Winter, but I have no idea how the hell it ended up in a pyramid in the middle of a desert."

"How do you know its name?"

"I dunno, it kinda... told me." Lupa took the amulet off and slipped it in her pocket. "It can give the answer to any question the wearer asks, but only once per person."

"What does that have to do with winter?"

"Maybe that's the name of the place it was made, or the person who it was made by." Lupa suggested. "Sure seems like a convenient plot device, though."

"Damn straight. Now then, now that we've obtained the item for this dungeon, let's beat the boss and get out of here."

Lupa grabbed Phelous by the waist, and flew up the shaft leading to the top of the pyramid. Phelous reached into his pocket, but after rummaging around for a few seconds, he realized something was wrong.

"That MacGuffin's gone." he said.

Sure enough, as they emerged from the top of the pyramid, they heard a loud screeching sound. A huge bird-dragon-thing made of metal soared above them; it screeched again, firing a missile from the underside of its wing right at them.

Phelous focused his eye lasers on the missile, destroying it mid-flight. The metal bird-dragon-thing (for convenience's sake, we'll just call it The Claw) turned around and flew right at them; Lupa did the same, engaging it in a seemingly lopsided game of chicken.

Unfortunately, The Claw stood no chance. Lupa's fist easily punched through its armor, and she flew through its body while Phelous wrecked shit up with eye lasers. They exited it through its back, and the creature hit the ground with a deafening thud. But The Claw was far from dead; it screeched again, and launched a number of missiles at them from the ground.

Phelous tried shooting down all the lasers, but Lupa was forced to take evasive manuvers to dodge the rest. She tried the classic trick of forcing the missiles to hit the one that fired it, but The Claw swatted them out of the sky with its wing.

"Stop screwing around and just catch it already." Phelous said.

"I can't, I don't have any more Master Balls." Lupa said. "But I do have Sparklypoo! I choose you!" She threw the occupied ball toward The Claw, releasing a huge scaly mouth on legs that crushed The Claw by falling on it. Sparklypoo, who had grinded up a few levels offscreen, opened its mouth and fired a Hyper Beam through The Claw's head, killing it almost instantly.

"Yay! Go Sparklypoo!" Lupa cheered.

"That's still a terrible name." Phelous said. Lupa grabbed the Master Ball and recalled Sparklypoo before it could go on a murderous rampage. She took out the map to Agrippa, and after they confirmed their course, they flew on to the next chapter...


	3. Chapter 3

Lupa and Phelous flew over the land, following their map to the coastal city of Agrippa in the north. They flew over a wide canyon, and sure enough, some bandits had built a small camp near the only bridge across it.

"See, I was right!" Phelous said.

"I could've just flown over them in the first place! That detour with the pyramid was completely pointless!" Lupa complained.

"Yeah, whatever. They would've found a way to stop us."

As they kept flying to the north, the desert gave way to a coastal forest. By the looks of it, there was a commune of people living in harmony with the trees and all that, but screw that hippy shit. They kept going, following a river to the coast.

Lupa landed at the outskirts of a massive walled city, presumably the city of Agrippa. It looked like it had been standing for at least 10,000 years; the walls were dirty and weathered, and they looked older than that pyramid. Surprisingly, the city inside was relatively modern, with roads and cars and all that.

"What's with all the schizo tech?" Lupa wondered. "I thought this was going to be a generic quasi-medieval world."

"It's probably something stupid, like those aliens cut chunks out of Earth and physically transported them to wherever this is." Phelous said. "Sounds like the kind of stupid plot point that would show up in a fanfic."

"Or Secret Wars!"

"Sure, whatever."

Lupa called a cab, but they realized they didn't have any money. She tried paying the cabbie with a signed picture of David Hasselhoff, but he wouldn't take it.

"Well fine then!" Lupa flipped the cabbie off as he drove away.

"Why did you even call a cab in the first place? Did you forget that you could fly again?" Phelous asked.

"No. But we flew all the way here, and I don't want to carry your heavy ass again!"

"Fair enough."

They walked over to a newspaper stand, and Lupa flipped through a paper. Immediately, she found an article about some dude named "Lord Electriceye" who had acquired some alien technology. According to the article, he planned to use it to fight the aliens or something.

"Who's this Lord Electriceye guy?" Lupa asked the man at the newspaper stand.

"Uh, he's the guy in charge of the current govermnent." the man said. "Where're you from?"

"From, uh, out of town."

"You... you're aliens! HEY! SOMEONE! THESE ARE ALIENS!"

"Wait, what? I mean, technically I am an alien... I think?" Lupa stammered.

The man drew a gun on her, but Lupa karate chopped it out of his hand. A couple of bystanders dogpiled on Phelous, but he threw them off by jumping up Matrix Reloaded-style. But before they could get the hell out of there, a bunch of cops with AK-47s surrounded them.

"Stop right there, alien scum!" one of the cops said. "We've got all the evidence we need to bring you to justice! Or, if you resist, we'll be happy to fill you full of lead."

"I don't know what's going on!" Lupa protested. The cops put them in handcuffs and forced them into the back of their car. The passenger kept his AK pointed them at all times.

"Seriously, I don't know why you're arresting us. We're not from this planet, but we are human!" Lupa said.

"We'll let Lord Electriceye decide that."

"Question: Have you idiots ever seen these so-called aliens?" Phelous asked.

"Shut up!" The cop shoved the butt of his gun in Phelous' face. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't reduce your face to mush right now!"

"We're not aliens!" Phelous said.

"Settle down, Jim." the driver said. "They need to go through due process like everyone else. THEN we can get to the torturing and killing."

"Ooh boy!" The cop apparently named Jim grinned like a kid with candy. "It's been quite some time since we had a public execution! That'll teach those good-for-nothing alien sympathizers to change their minds."

"Okay, just give us the benefit of the doubt for a second. Who exactly are these aliens?" Lupa asked.

"About three years ago, Lord Electriceye revealed a conspiracy in the government: a bunch of senators were actually sleeper agents who planned on overthrowing the Empress and taking control of the country. After they were eliminated, the aliens declared open war on us, and they've been picking us off ever since."

"That's just great." Phelous remarked.

They were silent for the rest of the trip. Finally, the car came to a stop; but rather than a police station or prison or something, they had stopped at a pier. With their guns at their backs, the cops forced Phelous and Lupa onto a waiting ironclad, where some marines with AKs were standing at attention.

"These are the aliens?" the captain asked.

"Damn right!" Jim said. "Take 'em to Raus Island, boys!"

"Indeed. Get in the brig, scum!"

The marines forced them into the bowels of the ironclad, into a small dimly-lit cell.

"So, ready to escape?" Phelous asked.

"Yep!" Lupa easily broke the handcuffs, then bent the bars of the cell enough for her to get through. Phelous broke his cuffs as well, but he ripped the cell door right off its hinges and threw it to the side, making quite a bit of noise.

Naturally, this attracted two of the marines, who came in and started shooting. Lupa's super-speed allowed her to dodge and/or catch almost all of the bullets, and Phelous' lesser but still superhuman speed gave him plenty of time to shoot the bullets out of the sky with his eye lasers. Lupa put one of the marines in a sleeper hold and knocked him out, while Phelous just clocked the other one in the head.

But as they ran through the tight corridors that wouldn't be out of place in a generic FPS, the ship started to shake. Lupa's Sue-sense went off, and she jumped back as a beam of cold energy pierced the floor where she had been previously standing.

"Well, what do you know? Another monster attack. I'm guessing it's going to be a squid." Phelous said.

"I'm gonna say a whale." Lupa said. "Wanna bet on it?"

"You're on!"

Water started flowing from the hole in the floor, so Phelous and Lupa got out of there on the double. More marines appeared, but Phelous set his eye lasers to stun and disabled them. The ironclad's hull buckled against a high-pressure water current fired by the monster, and literally half of the ship snapped off and sank into the briny depths.

Lupa and Phelous made it to the deck of the ship, where they saw the remaining marines shooting wildly into the water. A high-pressure water cannon ripped through the deck, and over half of it fell into the depths; finally, the enemy made itself known.

It was Metal Gear RAY.

"Metal Gear?" Phelous said disbelievingly. "Seriously? I mean, The Claw at least looked kind of organic, but this thing is just a straight-up machine."

Lupa flew at the Metal Gear and punched it right in its head, barely dodging a counterattack from its water cannon. She opened up RAY's cockpit, but it was unmanned; so she just ripped out some vital-looking control panels and threw them into the sea.

RAY went berserk, and it savagely attacked what remained of the ironclad. Phelous jumped overboard, but Lupa flew over to him just before he hit the water.

"Huh?" Lupa noticed that Phelous was wearing a different pair of pants.

"Oh, I found these in a toolbox on the ship. Apparently they're Pants of Waterbreathing."

"...Pants of Waterbreathing?"

"Fucking randomly-generated loot." Phelous jumped from Lupa's arms into the cold water, but the required secondary powers of the Pants of Waterbreathing kept his core temperature normal.

RAY was finished with the ironclad, but before it could turn against Lupa and Phelous, an enormous toothy maw swallowed RAY and the wreckage whole.

"Oh fuck, it's a Megalodon!" Lupa said.

"It ate RAY! And then it's gonna eat us! OH MY GOOOOOOno I'm not doing this."

Phelous swam underneath the Megalodon, barely avoiding becoming a snack for the mighty shark. He just happened to notice a green glowing fuck-me light on the Megalodon's underside, but his eye lasers were mostly useless underwater. So instead, he tried something else:

"SUMMON ZOMBIE FISHERMAN!"

A zombie fisherman, followed by a school of skeletal fish, rose from the depths of the ocean. The zombie fisherman sicced his fish on the Megalodon, eating away its flesh until there was nothing left; the fisherman himself attacked the Megalodon's fuck-me light with his hook hand, dealing critical damage.

While the Megalodon was writhing in agony, Phelous deliberately swam into its mouth and ripped out one of its many teeth. He forced the Megalodon's throat open with an Optic Blast, then dove through its esophagus while doing as much damage as he could with both eye lasers and that tooth.

On the outside, Lupa called down a bolt of lightning, stunning the Megalodon with a huge electric shock. She called down another one, but she used her fists and a chi technique she'd learned from some old guy to redirect the electricity into her fists. Her Double Thunderpunch technique shot lightning right through the Megalodon's heart, finally landing the fatal blow. The skeletal fish dragged the Megalodon's corpse into the abyss, but Phelous made it out in time.

"Well motherfucker." Phelous said. "Of course you're the one who gets to actually kill the bastard."

"My name's in the title!" Lupa said, and they both laughed.

"So, what now?" Phelous asked rhetorically. "We've got no leads on the TARDIS, and we're out in the middle of the ocean."

"Well, why don't we go to the place that they were gonna take us anyways? That Lord Electric guy probably knows something about the TARDIS."

"Right, I forgot that the paper mentioned alien technology, which could mean anything but it obviously means the TARDIS."

Phelous summoned a couple of those dolphins from Super Mario World, and he and Lupa rode them to Raus Island.


	4. Chapter 4

"So where did you get the ability to summon marine life?" Lupa asked Phelous as they rode some dolphins to Raus Island, the home of the mysterious Lord Electriceye.

"I'm secretly Aquaman!" Phelous said. "Actually no, it's just plot convenience, and I'll probably forget all about it after this chapter's done."

"I got to summon lightning bolts in the last chapter, but I'll probably forget about those too." Lupa frowned.

"Eh, it's okay. We'll probably gain even more powers as the plot demands." Phelous said.

The dolphins dropped them off on the shores of Raus Island. Although it was technically an island (it was surrounded on all sides by water), it was about the same size as Texas. A massive tower/lighthouse type thing dominated the coast, and neanderthal-like humanoids dressed in animal skins were milling about it.

But as they got closer to the tower, they realized that something was a bit off with those cavemen. They were much, much taller than any human had any right to be - the smallest among them was at least 40 or 50 feet tall, and he looked like a juvenile.

"Giants?" Lupa wondered. The tower itself, which was built from black stone, seemed to be appropriately scaled to the giants, and it seemed to reach into the heavens themselves.

But as they approached, the giants took notice of them. One of them, an older woman with a spiked club, grunted something to the others. They all started shouting, and they all charged at the two.

Lupa sent out Sparklypoo, who was around the same size as the biggest of the giants. Sparklypoo ran at one of the giants and tore into it with its massive jaw, ripping the giant's right arm and a good chunk of its torso off. The other giants surrounded it and started beating on it with their clubs, but Sparklypoo shrugged them off with a wave of red energy.

A couple of the giants ran over to attack Lupa and Phelous, but they flew out of their reach. Phelous' lasers were ineffective, but Lupa had an idea to power them up... She called down a bolt of lightning and redirected it into Phelous' body; he discharged them through his eyes, sending both of the giants into convulsions.

"Why didn't you just attack them directly with that lightning?" Phelous complained.

"Because eye lightning!"

"But-"

"Eye! Lightning!"

Sparklypoo downed another giant with a Hyper Beam, but it had taken serious damage from the giants; their clubs had torn off large chunks of its scales, bleeding a thick black fluid that stained the beach. Reluctantly, Lupa called Sparklypoo back to recover from its wounds.

"So now what?" Phelous said as the surviving giants ran towards them.

"I've got a feeling about that tower." Lupa said. She flew at the tower's main gate, weaving through the attacks of the giants. Phelous noticed a door on the side of the tower that was scaled to their size; he shot the door down with eye lasers, and they flew through it, ending up in... a sitting room of some kind.

"Ah, so you're the famous Obscurus Lupa."

A man dressed in silver armor with gold trim sat on a fairly comfortable chair. He was wearing a fancy-looking red cape, and he was wearing a golden eyepatch with a blue gem in the middle.

"I'm gonna take a huge stab in the dark and say that you're Lord Electriceye." Phelous said.

"One and the same! I see, you're Phelous." Electriceye frowned. "Hmm, I was told that there'd be three of you. No matter."

"Where the hell's our TARDIS?" Lupa asked.

"Ah, that blue box? Yes, I did recover it from the Iyamo Plains. Unfortunately... it's out of your reach at the moment!" Electriceye laughed. "I'm aware of its potential uses, but my top men have been unable to discern exactly how to activate it. If you would come with me and show me how to use it, I'd gladly give it back... after I'm done using it, of course."

"Please, you couldn't be more transparently evil if you tried. Obviously you're going to double-cross us and take it for yourself." Phelous said.

Electriceye scowled. "If you do not wish to help me, I will simply dispose of you." He lifted his eyepatch, firing a lightning bolt from a bloody socket where his left eye should've been. Lupa intercepted and redirected it back at him, but he was unaffected.

"Gee, what an apropos name!" Phelous said sarcastically.

"BUt of course! One does not get a name like 'Lord Electriceye' easily. But I also happen to be completely immune to lightning, so your silly redirection trick won't work."

"Fine then! I'll just beat you up instead!" Lupa ran at Electriceye and swung at him, but he dodged, countering with a knee to her stomach. Phelous fired some eye lasers at him, but he countered with eye lightning; they briefly got in a beam struggle, but Electriceye overwhelmed Phelous, temporarily paralyzing him.

"Hmm, I expected you two to be stronger. I'm rather disappointed now." Electriceye said. "Tell you what: I'll let you go this time, so that you can rethink your decision to stand against me."

Electriceye snapped his fingers and teleported away.

"Ggh..." Lupa got up, clutching her stomach. "Phelous, you okay?"

"Yeah..." Phelous was slightly singed, but he didn't look too injured. "But could that guy be any more fucking stupid? He just let us live with minor injuries!"

The tower started to shake violently. Phelous got out of the way of some rubble, but the door they used to get in was completely blocked off.

"Of course, he was a load-bearing boss too. What a surprise."

"Stop complaining!" Lupa punched a hole in the floor, and they flew down into the main area. Oddly enough, the massive main gate they'd been before was a lot smaller from the inside.

Lupa busted the doors down, and they stepped outside... only to realize that everything was a lot smaller, including the giants, the tower, and the island. In fact, the giants were about the same size and Lupa and Phelous now...

"No Lupa, we're big now!" Phelous said. He grabbed one of the giants and broke its back, then threw it and hit more giants with it while he chokeslammed another. Lupa did a high kick to one giant's jaw, shattering it into thousands of little pieces. She picked up its club and swung it down on another's head.

Now missing over half of their former group, the remaining giants fled into the jungle. Lupa ran after them, but stopped once she realized that the entire island was shaking. She looked back at the crumbling tower, which was being pushed out of the ground by something...

"Oh gee, another boss monster. At least we're big enough to handle it on our own." Phelous said. But he was quickly silenced as a massive fissure split the entire beach, and a huge figure rose from the depths of the earth. That tower was just the tallest point of the monster, which was a human-like castle thing.

Lupa ran up to the monster and punched it, but it was quite sturdy. The bangles on its arms started glowing, and it attacked by grabbing her and shocking her with lightning. She broke out of its grip and tried redirecting its lightning, but like Electriceye, this monster was immune to its own attacks.

Phelous danced crazy, but it was ineffective. So instead, he remembered that he could summon doppelgangers of himself from the Plane of Infinite Phelouses and form a giant version of himself called MegaPhelous. So he did that, and as usual, Lupa jumped on top and formed the head, forming MegaLupalous. (But not MegaNanoPhelupa, which was made of nano-sized Phelouses linked up into a regular-sized Phelous, which then link up into MegaNanoPhelous, and Lupa forms the head of that. There's a huge difference.)

MegaLupalous, now roughly the same size as the monster, engaged it in some good old fisticuffs. The sheer force behind MegaLupalous' fists actually did physical damage to the monster, taking off its head and a chunk out of its torso. It tried electrifying them again, but MegaLupalous snapped both its arms off.

As a finishing move, the component Phelouses channeled their eye beams through their bodies and into Lupa.

"BEHOLD! MEGA LUPALOUS OPTIC BLAST!" A blast of energy reaching wave-motion gun levels shot out of Lupa's eyes, cutting through the monster into lots and lots of little pieces. It let out one last death rattle before expiring for good.

All but one of the component Phelouses returned to the Plane of Infinite Phelouses. They were still giant-sized, but they'd lost their means of returning to their normal size. On the other hand, they were huge; their new vantage point allowed them to see an enormous mountain in the middle of the island. The rest of the giants were fleeing toward it, which seemed like a hint to head toward it.


	5. Chapter 5

Even though that Lord Electriceye fellow had their TARDIS, Lupa and Phelous had no idea where he had disappeared to. They did, however, notice a number of giants fleeing toward a giant mountain in the middle of Raus Island, which seemed like as good a place as any to go.

But due to certain magical effects, both of them were similarly giant-sized. This allowed them to get to the base of the mountain fairly quickly; though Lupa still retained the power to fly, their increased sizes and some sort of magical invocation of the square-cube law made Phelous a lot heavier. She could still fly while carrying him, but it was a lot slower.

To their surprise, there was a town at the base of the mountain; even more surprising was the fact that the people and buildings in it were scaled to the same size as the giants. In fact, there were several giant corpses lying outside the town, and a number of bechainmailed guards with bloody halberds.

"Halt!" one of the guards said. He pointed his bloody halberd at Lupa. "Who are you?"

"We're, uh, looking for Lord Electriceye. We have an important meeting with him." Lupa said.

"Nothing suspicious about that. Welcome to Hemel!" The guard beckoned them in, then went back to wiping his halberd off as they passed through.

"You know, this particular progression of events is reminding me of something." Phelous commented.

"Of what?" Lupa asked.

"Well, I'd like to say 'a crappy fanfic', but it's something else. I can't quite put my finger on it."

As they walked through the town, they noticed something on the very top of the mountain. It seemed to be much, much taller than the tower on the coast, but they couldn't quite tell exactly how high up it went. So they stopped at one of the supermarkets in town to purchase supplies (they looted the giants for gold coins).

"So what exactly is that tower on the mountain?" Lupa asked the cashier as they checked out.

"Huh? I guess you're not from around here." the cashier said. "That's the Sky Tower that leads to the Sky Empress' castle. Even in the old days, it was pretty heavily guarded, but barely anyone's been let in it since the war broke out."

"Thanks for the exposition." Phelous said as he handed the coins over. They'd bought enough food and water to last them a while, and thanks to their hammerspace pockets, storage wasn't a problem. And with exposition in tow, they figured that the Sky Tower was as good a place to go as any.

But as they headed to the edge of town, another gate with more guards.

"Sorry, the Sky Tower's off-limits." the guard said.

"But we have important business with the Sky Empress." Lupa explained.

"We haven't been informed of any visitors to the Sky Castle."

Phelous stepped in. "Supposedly, there's aliens disguising themselves as humans about. We have important information for the Empress Herself, and we can't risk it being intercepted."

"Is that so?" the guard said.

"Yeah, they were supposed to be headed to Malus Tower for interrogation." another guard piped up. "In fact, you two look a bit suspicious. What if you're the aliens?"

"Uh..." Lupa stammered.

"ALIENS!" The second guard swung his halberd, but Lupa broke the shaft with a well-placed strike. Phelous picked up the other guard and flung him into the gates.

"Hey Phelous, have we actually killed any humans yet?" Lupa asked as she nerve-pinched a guard.

"Uh, we might've indirectly killed those marines. And there was all of those ninjas from Olympics, and Demon Hitler, and Mark Sevi I think?"

"Silly Phelous! Ninjas aren't people. And I'm pretty sure Mark Sevi was just some sort of projection or something. And... Demon Hitler? Really? You're going to count Demon Hitler as a human? And you killed the author of this thing!"

"It was in self-defense. But why do you care anyways?"

"Eh, just curious." Lupa grabbed the last guard and knocked him out with some chloroform that she totally had before shut up. "I guess those giants might count, but I'm writing them off as monsters."

With all of the guards unconscious, they opened the gates. There was a well-worn stone path that wrapped around the mountain, up to the Sky Tower on the peak; but they could see several watchtowers built along the path. There was no way they'd make it up that path without alerting the guards to their presence.

"You can still fly, right?" Phelous asked.

"Yeah, but if I carry you, we'll move too slow."

"True, but what if I ride Sparklypoo?" He motioned his head to the Master Ball on Lupa's belt.

"Nah, that's a terrible idea." Lupa said. "Hmm... But wait! What if you-"

"DON'T." Phelous growled.

"Aww, I was just kidding. Go, Sparklypoo!"

Lupa released Sparklypoo, who was both his standard size (making him only slightly larger than the supersized Phelous and Lupa) and still injured from the fight with the giants. Lupa gave him a couple of Super Potions, but it didn't restore it to full health, and they didn't have the time to rest and recover.

But it was enough. Phelous climbed on Sparklypoo's back and kicked it in the... lower jaw, causing it to flip the fuck out and run right up the mountain. The watchtowers were immediately alerted to the giant man riding an evil monstrosity, but Sparklypoo blasted everything in sight with Hyper Beams, reducing them to rubble. Lupa simply followed in Sparklypoo's footsteps.

Before they knew it, they were in front of the Sky Tower. There were two entrances side by side - one was scaled for their current size, one was for their normal size. Naturally, they couldn't fit in the smaller one, so they went through the larger one; Lupa called Sparklypoo back, and they stepped through the gate...

...only to be greeted by another gate, of the same size. They stepped through that too, to reach the interior of the tower, which was a glorified spiral staircase around a huge central pillar. A huge one, yeah, but not much more.

"Looks like we're back at our normal size again." Phelous commented. He pointed out a secondary entrance, which was the same size as the main door they'd entered from.

"Or we could still be big." Lupa said.

"Yeah I guess."

Lupa picked up Phelous, and they flew around the spiral staircase, avoiding all of the various traps that had been placed there. Sure enough, Lupa had no difficulty flying while carrying Phelous, which meant that they were normal size.

After what seemed like an eternity, they finally reached a ladder at the end of the winding staircase. They climbed up, onto a small platform suspended in midair. There were a number of floating platforms and lifts leading to a huge floating castle, which would normally demand some crazy-ass jump skills - but Lupa could fly, rendering them moot. They flew right to the castle, which was lavishy-decorated and, you know, floating in the sky.

The castle itself was sized to their normal height, and to their surprise, there weren't any generic guards outside of the gates. As they approached, the gate opened by itself, inviting them in - but just like any good villainous place, the gates shut as they walked inside.

The castle was completely empty - there wasn't even a token show of resistance. A red carpet led them to the throne room, where two figures waited - Lord Electriceye, and a blond woman in a frilly pink dress.

"Yes, I expected you to come here." Lord Electriceye said. "My Ladyship, I would suggest you retreat."

"I will do no such thing." The Sky Empress got up off her throne. "Tell me, who are you?"

"I'm Allison Pregler, aka Obscurus Lupa. We've come here to reclaim an item that this guy stole from us."

"And I'm Phelous, the not-so-comic relief companion."

"I see." The Sky Empress turned to Lord Electriceye. "What did you steal from these two, that they would murder their way through my territory to reclaim it?"

"My Ladyship, I recovered an object that would help us greatly against the threat of the Pax Terra. It originally belonged to these two, but I believe our use for it is more noble."

"I see." She turned back to Lupa and Phelous. "And what of the stories I've heard of your destruction of the monsters sealed within amber?"

"Yeah, we killed a few of those too."

"Ah!" Lord Electriceye frowned. "I do not know how Your Ladyship came to know this..."

"I am rather disappointed that you would withhold information from me, Fraser. But regardless... I have a proposition for you two.

"It is believed by our people that the world of Mykodia was created by two gods - a god of earth, who shaped the land, and a god of heaven, who breathed life into it. Our ancestors gave most of their worship to the heavenly god, neglecting the earthly god that gave them their forms. Naturally, the earth god was not pleased. He created an army of automatons and waged war against the god of heaven, but he was defeated and captured.

"But even the god of heaven could not kill another god. Instead, he cut the earth god's body into six pieces. Their bodies were sealed within amber, to sleep for eternity... but it was foretold that defectors from heaven would come one day and unseal the pieces of the god, reforming it and spelling doom for the land."

"Well, that was entirely unneeded exposition." Phelous commented. "So you want us to kill these pieces of a god, and in return, we get the TARDIS back?"

"I believe it would be beneficial for the both of us. I believe that we can make peace with the Pax Terra, without resorting to extreme measures." The Sky Empress cast a knowing glance at Lord Electriceye as she said that.

"But..." Electriceye was furious. "I have continually told you, Your Ladyship, that the Pax Terra will not compromise. They are coming to Mykodia with war in mind, and they will not stop until we are under their thumb or lie in ashes."

"Wait a minute..." Phelous furrowed his brow, which changed into a pained grimace as he realized exactly where he was. "Mykodia? As in... mushroom?"

"Correct. I am Peach Toadstool III, Sky Empress of the Mushroom Kingdom of the world of Mykodia."

"God damnit!" Phelous yelled. "Grass, desert, water, giant, sky! It's Super Mario Bros 3! It's goddamn Super Mario Bros 3!"

"Please ignore him, Your Ladyship." Lupa did a respectful bow. "If I may ask, what exactly is the Pax Terra?"

"An alternate Earth that subjugated your own." Electriceye said. "In their timeline, various factors led them to become a united one world government by the year 1963. Then, one of them got the bright idea to spread their enlightenment to other worlds... starting with other Earths. Including your own.

"I'm from that alternate Earth. I came here to warn you fools about them, but you evidently think that they can be negotiated with." Electriceye ripped off one of his gauntlets, exposing a maple leaf tattooed on his right palm. "In your world, I'm known as Fraser of Awesome Video Games. In my world, I'm a member of the resistance to the Pax Terra. I tore out my own eye to gain the power of the lightning eye, and it will not go to waste! I'll defend your world, Sky Empress, because I'm the only one who can!"

Electriceye flipped his eyepatch up, unleashing the power of his lightning upon the Empress. But unlike her more mainstream counterpart (in case you didn't get it with the references to sealed gods and Sky Empresses, this is an alternate Mushroom Kingdom to the one in SMB3), Empress Peach conjured a powerful barrier, negating the lightning.

Lupa intervened with a flying kick, but Electriceye grabbed her leg and broke it in three places. He threw her uselessly to the side, while keeping his deadly gaze upon Peach. Phelous countered with his own eye lasers, but Electriceye was immune to them; Phelous rushed him too, but Electriceye quickly dispatched him.

"Ha! In my world, Phelan, you're one of the resistance's greatest fighters. I'm sure he'll get a laugh when I tell him how weak you are!"

"You know, the evil alternate Earth thing is a bit played out, don't you think?" Phelous said.

"Shut up!" Electriceye dropped his assault on Peach, and walked over to Phelous, grabbing him by the neck. "You think you're so clever with all your meta bullshit. But let's see how well your lampshades hang when I crush your windpipe!"

"No!"

Lupa flew at Electriceye, kicking him with her good leg. She distracted him long enough to release his grip on Phelous, but he instead grabbed her and started electrocuting her.

"Yes, the famous Obscurus Lupa who won the Olympics and saved the universe twice over! And you meet your end from a lowly soldier like me."

"No!" Lupa struggled against Electriceye, but he tightened his grip on her throat.

"Yes!"

"No..." With her last bit of strength, Lupa reached down to her belt and activated her Master Ball. Fortunately, the throne room was large enough for Sparklypoo to manifest in its full glory, but it was still wounded from the giants and the mountain climb.

"See, Your Ladyship? These two are the defectors from heaven in your stupid legend! They only seek to dominate the power of the earth god, not destroy it!" Electriceye turned his gaze on Sparklypoo, who took major damage from the lightning. Peach tried intervening, but Electriceye's rage only intensified his lightning, overwhelming her barrier and knocking her out with a massive shock.

"And now, you die." Electriceye reached for the sword attached to his back. He let go of Lupa, dropping her on the ground; he dramatically raised his sword...

but he was interrrupted by a gust of wind. He looked back, and saw the wounded Sparklypoo inhaling as hard as it could in its wounded state. Electriceye stood his ground, but Lupa was sucked into the monster's maw.

And then, a transformation took place. Sparklypoo's body was enveloped in an aura of dark wind, which gradually shrunk into a humanoid form. The figure stood up, throwing off its cloak of shadow; it was a fifteen-foot-tall Lupa, with literally flaming hair, wearing armor made of Sparklypoo's red-black scales. She was more muscular, and was wielding a ten-foot-long black sword with golden triangles and patterns of five rings engraved along the length of the blade.

"Fraser, huh?" Lupa Demise chuckled. "I'll make sure to tell my world's Fraser how stereotypically villainous you were when I get back to my Earth."

Lupa rose her sword, and a bolt of lightning shot through the Sky Castle's roof, electrifying her sword. Electriceye tried gazing at her, but her sword easily conducted and absorbed the lightning. With her off hand, Lupa fired a burst of red energy at Electriceye, causing him to fall to his knees.

Lupa swung her sword in a huge vertical arc, throwing a crescent of red energy mixed with lightning at him. The sheer voltage of the attack overrode Electriceye's resistance, severely wounding him.

"Ghh..." Electriceye snapped his fingers, and he teleported away.

Lupa de-fused from Sparklypoo, and she recalled it into its ball.

"Are you okay?" She ran over to Phelous first.

"Yeah..." Phelous said while rubbing his neck. "What about her?"

"I... I'm fine." Peach got to her feet. "I was foolish to trust him. He appeared to me and revealed that most of the senators of the Mushroom Kingdom were Pax Terra sleeper agents... and they initiated a coup on me the next day. I gave him nearly unlimited power to do what he needed to do to prevent the Pax Terra's invasion, but he turned my empire into a paranoid police state. I..."

"At least he didn't kidnap you." Phelous said. "Speaking of which, what happened to Bowser in this universe?"

"Bowser? I'm unfamiliar with the name."

"You know, big turtle guy, red hair, breathes fire, kidnaps you for a living..."

"Hmm, you must mean the Great Demon King. Our greatest knight slew him many years ago, but his base still lies deep within the earth."

"Gee, I wonder who your 'greatest knight' is." Lupa said sarcastically.

"So he'll probably be in the Dark World." Phelous said. "Uh, how do we get there?"

"The only entrance we ever found to the Demon King's realm was through the Hidden Jungle, which lies deep underneath the North Pole. My castle is capable of transporting you there, and I will provide you with the necessary supplies... unfortunately, I cannot spare any of my soldiers."

"Yeah, sounds about right." Phelous said. "Still... Super Mario Bros 3..."


	6. Chapter 6

"By the way, do you have a problem with us using one of your monsters to defeat Electriceye?"

Lupa and Phelous, both dressed in heavy winter gear, stood in the throne room of the Sky Empress Peach's flying castle. It never occured to them to ask why she was the empress of a kingdom, but they figured it was just one of those fanfic things that didn't occur to the writer until after he wrote it.

"You have already killed three of the earth god's pieces." Peach said. "Even if he were resurrected at this point, it would be in an incomplete form that we could handle. And since you've succeeded in dominating its power, I don't think that will happen."

"Well, okay then. But we're also really sorry about killing a bunch of your soldiers."

"Don't worry about it."

The gates of the castle opened, and a frigid wind blasted forth. Beneath the castle was a snowy tundra that stretched out forever in every direction; the only notable features were a few wrecked airships half-embedded in the snow.

"We managed to map out the Ice Cap and the Hidden Jungle during our campaign against the Great Demon King." Peach handed them some maps. "Good luck."

"Yeah, that pretty much confirms it." Phelous looked at the map, which looked exactly like the overworlds of Worlds 6 and 7 from SMB3. "But thanks, Your Queenness or whatever."

Lupa and Phelous jumped from the Sky Castle, diving through the air and landing on the deck of one of the broken airships. After picking themselves up, they started heading east, into the featureless tundra...

"At least we still have deus ex machina powers backing us up." Phelous said as they trudged through the snow. "Seriously, what was up with that Lupa Demise shit?"

"I dunno." Lupa shrugged. "When it ate me, it tried to drain my power, but I just took control of it, and things happened."

"What a great explanation. But of course, now that you've used it once, it'll be completely ineffective against Goatee Fraser when we see him again."

"Yeah, I knew he was evil as soon as I saw that goatee." Lupa said. "And what's with the shit about these monsters being pieces of an evil god? That's completely out of place in a Mario world."

"Oh, but it's Mykodia, not the Mushroom Kingdom." Phelous said sarcastically. "So obviously evil gods and evil alternate Earths are totally awesome!"

They continued walking through the tundra, but they soon came across a deep lake with an island in the middle. The ruins of what looked like a castle stood upon the island, but the bridge had long since vanished into the depths.

"So that's the the third fortress, according to the map. The entrance to World 7 is in there somewhere." Phelous said, shaking his head. "God."

Lupa grabbed Phelous, and they flew over the lake to the fortress' main doors. The doors were frozen shut, forcing them to fly through a hole in the roof. Once inside, they made their way to the main floor, only to find something very interesting...

"God damn it!" A familiar-looking man was pointing a shotgun at a pack of ghosts. He pulled the trigger, firing some sort of magical ammo at the ghosts - it didn't injure them, but it did drive them off.

"Wait a minute." The roaring fire behind him cast him in silhouette, but Lupa seemed to recognize him when he turned around.

"Oh great, more of you Pax Terra douches." Nash pointed his gun at the two. "I didn't expect you to follow me all the way out to the fucking frigid bowels of Hell."

"Huh? No, we're not with the Pax Terra." Lupa said. "It's me, Allison! You know, Lupa from Channel Awesome?"

"Yeah, I know who you look like." Nash said. "We were filming the fourth-year anniversary when the Pax Terra invaded. I saw you die with my own two eyes. Barely half of us made it onto Comicron One, and you two weren't among them."

"But 8-Bit Mickey said that we were away when they invaded."

"So there's three alternate Earths in this story so far. What do you wanna bet that there'll be more introduced to patch up the other plot holes?" Phelous said.

"Okay, yeah, you're Phelous." Nash lowered his gun. "So why the hell are you here?"

Lupa gave Nash a brief overview of the events that had led them to this particular place at this particular time.

"Huh. Sounds like a crappy fanfic." Nash commented.

"I know!" Phelous shouted. "But anyways, why don't you come with us or something?"

"Where?"

"Well, there's a jungle underneath this castle... somehow. And beneath that is where the guy who has our TARDIS is hiding out... we hope." Phelous said. "You know, when you say it out loud, it's kind of fucking stupid that we came all the way out here on an assumption."

"Yeah, no kidding." Nash said. "But yeah, I guess I can come with you. I've explored this fort a few times, and there's a weird door in the basement that I can't get past."

"20 bucks says it's made out of amber!" Phelous said.

"No way I'm taking that bet." Lupa said.

After the requisite 'new party member' fanfare, Lupa, Phelous and Nash walked into the basement. Nash's boomstick (it was literally named that), which had unlimited holy-affinity ammo, drove off the ghosts that relentlessly assaulted them on the way down.

Sure enough, at the very bottom of the fortress was a door made of the same amber that had kept the other beasts imprisoned. However, the door had multiple deep cracks in it, and as soon as Lupa touched it, it shattered into hundreds of fragments.

"So, the monster this time... I'm gonna say a yeti." Lupa said.

"No, it's going to be a polar bear." Phelous said.

"King Ghidorah."

They both looked at Nash, confused by his seeming non-sequitir - until they saw the giant three-headed golden dragon frozen in a block of ice. Before they could question the logistics of freezing a dragon in ice, King Ghidorah opened all six of its eyes and easily broke through the ice, letting out a mighty roar.

But the foundations of the fortress had weakened over the years. As King Ghidorah spread its wings, the entire floor caved in, and they all fell into a bottomless pit.

Lupa woke up some time later. The first thing she noticed was that she wasn't dead; in fact, she felt completely fine, despite falling for god knows how long. The second thing she noticed was her surroundings; it looked like she was in a tropical jungle that had been flash-frozen. The sky was a dingy yellow color, even though they were ostensibly underground.

The third thing she noticed was an ear-splitting roar. King Ghidorah, which had taken to the sky, was doding red energy beams fired from below. It was returning the attacks with lightning fired from all three of its heads, but it seemed to be rather ineffective.

"Up, human!"

Lupa felt something prodding her in the back. She turned around to see an ugly-ass insect thing holding a stick.

"Huh, who're you?" Lupa asked.

"Silence, human! You're a prisoner of the Dhz tribe now!" the insect announced. It was speaking proper English, though with an unidentifiable accent.

"Hang on, I've seen you guys before! Yeah, I met GshRs or something in that desert place!" Lupa said. She pulled out the map to Agrippa they'd obtained so long ago, and handed it to the insect thing.

"Hmm." It studied the map for a moment. "Yes, this is Gsh handiwork. Very interesting. Who are you, human?"

"I'm here to pursue Lord Electriceye and kill kaiju." Lupa said, posing like a badass while doing so.

"Then perhaps you could deal with that?" The insect thing pointed to King Ghidorah.

"Yep!" Lupa jumped up and flew over to the giant dragon. One of its heads noticed her and fired a lightning beam her way, but she was able to get out of the way in time. Once she climbed on top of King Ghidorah, she noticed Sparklypoo wandering around in the frozen jungle below, taking occasional Hyper Beam potshots at the dragon.

"Hey!" Lupa yelled at Nash and Phelous, who were both hanging on to Sparklypoo's back for dear life. She crawled up Ghidorah's neck, dodging attacks by its other heads, and gouged out the eyes of one of its heads; while it was distracted, she flew over to Sparklypoo.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"We landed in this place with your Master Ball." Nash said. "We were looking for you when Ghidorah all-out attacked, and we didn't really have a choice but to distract it with this thing."

"Yeah, thanks for sharing your flight powers with us." Phelous said.

"Shut up, Phelous. Okay Sparklypoo, let's do it!"

"Nope!" Phelous jumped into Sparklypoo's open mouth, transforming into a much more bestial version of himself with flaming red hair and scale armor. Instead of a giant sword, Phemise wielded a huge scythe.

"Wait, what?" Nash wondered. "How the hell does that work?"

Phelous flew up to Ghidorah, deflecting its energy beams with his scythe. With a single swing, he cut off all three of its heads and both of its wings, instantly killing it. The lifeless body of the kaiju crashed down into the jungle, leaving a huge crater. Phelous returned to Nash and Lupa's position, and Lupa recalled Sparklypoo, returning Phelous to his standard form.

"Well, that was anticlimactic." Nash said. "And what the hell did you just do there?"

"I did something awesome." Phelous said, nodding his head. "Well, awesome in the eyes of the author, at least. Now let's go on to the next chapter and get this shit over with."


	7. Chapter 7

"Conglaturation!"

The insect guys from last chapter met up with Lupa, Phelous and Nash as the latter were trudging through the jungle.

"Oh, you guys." Lupa said. "We took care of your dragon problem, so will you get us to the Dark World?"

"Yes, of course. Though it's rather odd... I don't understand how you could kill a god, when our own Heaven God was unable to kill him."

"We're just that good." Phelous said. "So what are you guys anyways?"

"I am DhzRho, leader of the Dhz tribe. We act as mediators between the Sky People above and the Earth People below... or, we used to. The Demon King's destruction has left us looking for another purpose in life."

"Yeah, that's all very interesting, but I don't remember fucking bug people in my Mario games." Phelous commented.

"I'm sorry?"

"Don't worry about him." Lupa said.

They started walking through the dense jungle, taking what appeared to be an intentional path cut through the foliage.

"So how exactly does this work?" Nash asked. "Is this world just built in layers?"

"That is correct." DhzRho said. "The Sky People live on the outermost layer, we live within the middle layer, and the Earth People live in the Dark World. Below that lies Lanayru, the inner sun that provides light and warmth to the lands that Eldin and Faron do not reach."

"That... doesn't begin to make sense." Nash shook his head. "But then again, I've seen worse."

"Wait a minute. Those suns are called..." Phelous facepalmed. "Now we're getting Zelda mixed up in this shit. That's just wonderful. What's next, the 'greatest knight' that killed Bowser is actually Captain Falcon wielding the Star Rod?"

"How about giant Aztec temples shaped like pipes?" Lupa said, pointing out said Aztec-esque temple on the horizon.

"...I'm not even going to acknowledge that."

"That is one of our Warp Temples. The Sky People built them for easy transport throughout the Hidden Jungle." DhzRho said. "We can use it to get to the entrance to the Dark World. Unfortunately, we are forbidden to step into the Dark World, so you are on your own after that."

"Whatever, that's fine." Phelous said dismissively.

The land around the Warp Temple was significantly more industrialized than the rest of the jungle; the trees had mostly been cleared, leaving a huge patch of desert, and giant sandstone bricks and green warp pipes were scattered all over the place. DhzRho exposited that the Sky People had originally intended to fully colonize the Hidden Jungle, but the long-standing war with the Great Demon King lead to a peace treaty that mostly left the Hidden Jungle intact.

"And what was the point of explaining any of that?" Phelous asked.

"It served as a segue into the next plot point." Lupa said. They were standing inside of the Warp Temple; the interior was hollow, with only a large green pipe inside. Lupa, Phelous and Nash all jumped onto the pipe, and they were sucked down into its depths...

A few minutes later, they ended up in the middle of the jungle; the ruins of the Warp Temple that had once stood there were strewn around the area. In the distance was another castle similar to the Sky Palace, overgrown with weeds and vines. The ruined Warp Temple and the castle were connected by a dirt path, but as soon as they stepped off of the warp pipe, the jungle itself seemed to stir...

"The jungle's alive." Lupa said. "It's watching us."

"Yep, I feel it too." Nash had his boomstick at the ready. He fired a shot into the thick foliage, and the jungle responded by attacking him with vines.

"Great idea!" Phelous said mockingly. He drove off some of the vines with his eye lasers, but they re-grew faster than he could kill them. Lupa ran toward the castle, into the clearing where she could summon Sparklypoo, but some vines snatched her and dragged her into the depths.

"Fuck!" Phelous cranked up the juice on his eye beams, but he was quickly running out of energy.

"Wait, I can stop this..." Nash said... something, and the earth beneath them began to shake. A number of gigantic skeletal figures rose from the dirt, and they proceeded to fire bursts of ultraheated air into the jungle, burning away large swaths of vegetation.

"Dry Bones?" Phelous wondered. Indeed, the skeletons looked like bipedal turtles, though if their undead remains were any indication, they were far more monstrous in life. One of the giant Dry Bones reached into an untouched patch of growth and pulled Lupa out; in response, an absolutely monstrous Pirahna Plant emerged from behind the castle and started taking pot-shots at them with enormous fireballs.

"Where did you get these guys?" Lupa asked.

"I dunno. The same place that you got your plot-convenience powers, I assume." Nash said, as he freed himself from the now-dead vegetation. "Okay, you uh, skeleton turtles. Go and kill that thing in the back there."

The Dry Bones army dutifully responded by digging up more of their comrades, then blindly charging into the jungle to kill the huge Pirahna. They lost more than half their numbers alone in the charge, but they kept on going without any regard to their safety.

"Is that thing the last piece of the earth god?" Lupa wondered.

"Probably not. It's obviously going to be Bowser." Phelous said.

"I wouldn't be so sure. Mario killed Bowser in this world, and they were saying that they couldn't easily kill gods, right?" Nash said, reaching ever closer to an epiphany. "And I just manifested really odd zombie powers for no reason, just like you guys got random powers after killing the desert bird thing, right?"

"Well technically, Sparklypoo killed that bird." Lupa said.

"But you're its trainer or whatever, right? So what if it absorbed the, I don't know, divine essence from the bird and transferred it to you two, giving you random powers and the ability to combine with it?"

"Seems improbable, but it's probably right." Phelous said. "Seems like a pretty blatant retcon, though."

"Not at all! It totally fits into the nonsensical plot of this thing." Nash said. "But anyways, I've got some more Raise Dead spells to cast."

Nash invoked his zombie powers again, raising more Dry Bones. The giant Pirahna had long since been burnt to a crisp by the other Dry Bones, but more had risen up from the jungle to take their revenge. Lupa called down a lightning bolt on one of them somehow, then summoned Sparklypoo who Hyper Beam'd the giant Pirahnas.

Once the battle had been reduced to more manageable levels, the three of them snuck into the overgrown castle. Like the Warp Temples, the castle was almost entirely hollow. Unlike the Warp Temples, this castle didn't have a warp pipe - the floor had mostly collapsed, giving way to a pit into an almost literal Hell.

Oddly enough though, there was a woman floating above the pit. She slowly glided toward them, and they quickly realized who she was (or at least who she looked like):

"Of course it's the Lindsay Chick." Phelous said. "Let me guess, you're from the alternate universe where the Nazis won WWII and you're the ruler of East Antarctica."

"Why are you hurting the jungle?" NChick asked.

"Huh? Well it fucking attacked us!" Lupa said.

"Oh, I get it. You're a forest fairy or some shit like that." Phelous sighed. "Yeah, because you and Doug reviewed Ferngully, it totally makes sense."

"Shut up." NChick pointed her magic wand at Phelous, shooting three rings of energy at him. Phelous jumped up and easily dodged the slow-moving rings, and responded with a barrage of icicles.

"Ooh, more new powers as the plot demands!" Lupa said. Her feet crackled with electricity, and she delivered a flying Thunder Kick to NChick's jaw. The assault cut through NChick's skin, revealing its true form: a Swamp Thing-esque mass of shambling vegetation.

"STOP IT!" The Swamp Thing grew a few sizes and started summoning more NChick doppelgangers. A couple of giant Dry Bones came to Nash's aid and dealt with most of the clones, while Phelous summoned some of his doppelgangers from the Plane of Infinite Phelouses.

In the middle of the fray, Lupa used her newfound lightning fists and feet to stun the Swamp Thing into paralysis; she then amped up the voltage, lighting the Swamp Thing on fire. It was able to regenerate most of the damage, but the fire kept burning it away, keeping it in a constant state of pain.

"Which means I get fire, I guess." Nash pointed his finger at the Swamp Thing, and his entire fist burst into flames. "This hand of mine is... burning. Uh, fireball spam or something."

Nash let loose a barrage of explosive flaming spheres, dealing massive damage to anything and everything. The castle itself started to collapse around them, killing off most of the expendable clones. Lupa grabbed Phelous and Nash, and they flew into the pit to the Dark World.

But the Swamp Thing followed them in freefall. Its body shot out like tentacles, grabbing pieces of rubble from the collapsing castle above and throwing them downward; one hit Lupa in the back, causing her to drop her two companions.

"Damn, that's a long way down." Nash said, looking at the hellish landscape below. "Uh, Lupa? You gonna grab us?"

"Hold on a second!" Lupa destroyed a chunk of rubble with a lightning bolt from her hand, but the Swamp Thing just kept throwing more.

"ARRRRGH!" The Swamp Thing spawned more NChick copies and directed them at the falling trio.

"Trio, huh?" Phelous said, noting the phrasing of the sentence above him. "And we've randomly got elemental powers, so..."

"TRIPLE TECH: DELTA FORCE!"

Lupa, Phelous and Nash flew into a triangle formation and fired a triangle-shaped burst of multi-elemental energy upward. It completely annihilated the Swamp Thing and his NChick copies.

"Well that wasn't shoehorned in at all."

Lupa grabbed the other two, and they safely landed in the hellish landscape of the Dark World.


	8. Chapter 8

Phelous grabbed his map of the Dark World.

"Yep, this is World 8 all right. Which means we get to swim through a lake of red water."

"Red water? Isn't it lava?"

"Well, Mario could swim through it without dying, so no, it's water."

The trio followed a rather sloppy-looking road forward. The ruins of guard towers and vehicles littered the road, alongside more skeletal corpses than could be counted. Oddly enough, there was some still-living vegetation along the road as well: though the battle had forever damaged the countryside, anything that could grow in the Dark World's soil was hardy enough to survive.

Sure enough, after around an hour of walking, they came across the shore of a red lake. Waiting for them was a fleet of wooden ships, crewed by the animated remains of the former Koopa Troop.

"Hold on, I've got this." Phelous said.

The red sea started to boil. A single Cheep Cheep leapt from the water, landing on the deck of one of the ships and flailing around uselessly. A second Cheep-Cheep did the exact same thing... but they were followed by thousands upon thousands of fish majestically jumping from the depths of the red water onto the ships. The literal skeleton crews threw as many of the fish off as they could, but several more replaced each one they threw.

Eventually, the sheer volume of fish dragged the ships into the depths. And once they went below the surface, they didn't come back up.

"Flying seafood special, bitches." Phelous did an awesome pose, and the background exploded behind him. Phelous then made an ice bridge across the red water, and they moved on.

At the other shore of the lake was a half-finished Warp Temple. A convenient mountain range blocked the way forward, forcing them to take the pipe to the next area.

"The next one is the one with those fucking hand traps. I'm super excited to see how they get translated into this fic." Phelous said as they emerged on the other side of the mountains. But to their surprise, the warp led to the third area of the Dark World - the titular dark area.

"This is beginning to look like a job for Aquaman..." Nash commented. He created a pretty big fireball and threw it upward, illuminating the surrounding area.

The path before them was again littered with the ruins of battle. But as they trudged through the cold desert, they came across a city half-sunken in the sand: a city that, based on the architecture, was built by the Koopa Troop. The walls surrounding the city had fallen long ago, and the siege of the city by the Sky People had killed everyone in it.

At the center of the city was a still-intact castle, which looked like it had been hastily repaired. Lupa checked inside, and sure enough, a Warp Pipe had been built inside.

"So did we just sequence break?" Lupa asked.

"Who knows?" Phelous shrugged. "I'm still expecting those hand traps."

After their relatively short jaunt, they jumped into the pipe to go to the next area...

...which was Area 2, the one with the hand traps.

"God damnit."

But the setup was a bit different. As they walked forward, they came across a deep chasm with only a single rickety bridge spanning the gap - and they couldn't see the other end. Nash looked into the chasm, and saw a number of disembodied arms floating in the depths.

"Well then. That's frightening."

Immediately, several of the arms flew up at lightning speed. The arms, which were all several times bigger than any of the trio, swarmed around them and tried to drag them into the depths for some unknown purpose, but all three of them fended the arms off with their various abilities.

"Wonderful." Phelous said. "Lupa, just fly us over that bridge."

"Wuss." Lupa grabbed Nash and Phelous and they flew over the chasm, with the latter two blasting any hand traps that got near them.

"Why the hell are there a bunch of floating arms here anyways?" Nash asked.

"You know, they never really explained that in the game either." Phelous said. "They're just supposed to be scary or something."

"They're not really 'scary'. More like 'utterly wrong'."

They landed on the other side of the chasm, and the hand traps finally stopped attacking them. They continued onward, but rather than finding another castle or Warp Temple, they came across the mighty walls of the Castle Koopa itself.

Literally thousands of ruined vehicles sat at the castle gates. Not a single one of them was able to get into the castle, but then again, red shirts very rarely do anything of use. And Peach's tanks were as red as they came, both literally and figuratively.

Lupa flew alone to the top of the walls, only to be greeted by a fleet of airships. Unlike the navy they'd encoutered before, these ships were piloted by genuine Earth-born humans.

"GET HER!" A unified battle-cry was shouted by the entire fleet, and the ships all took aim. Lupa covered herself in a shield of electrical energy, which vaporized everything that merely got close to her - including the ships, as she pinballed between them.

But the fleet was immense, and she was running out of energy. She landed inside the castle, which was oddly enough a sort of oasis in the Dark World - there was a deep red river with all sorts of odd fish swimming around in it, and humongous mushrooms grew like trees. The castle itself was both extravagant and heavily fortified, with laser-spewing Bowser statues lining the various ledges.

Lupa summoned Sparklypoo, who busted down the gates with a Hyper Beam. Phelous and Nash ran inside and started blasting the airships above, only for a fleet of tanks to emerge from the castle doors.

"Wait, where the hell did they get all of that wood?" Nash wondered. But he had no time to ponder that question, as a shell from a nearby tank exploded near them.

Lupa combined with Sparklypoo, but her enhanced form was somewhat limited in area-of-effect attacks. She trashed a good number of the tanks with lightning-powered sword beams, but she was taking a lot of hits from the airships, which were rightly targeting her above her two allies.

"Ass-pull powers, don't fail me now!" Lupa tapped into her reserve of ass-pull power, which sure enough didn't fail her: Lupa transformed into a 500-foot-tall humanoid kaiju, though she became even more monstrous in the process. She gained horns, claws and leathery wings, and her scale armor became straight-up scales all across her body, arms and legs.

"Hell yeah!" Kaiju Lupa said. She reached up and trashed several airships with a single swipe of her claws, then fired electric eye beams at the tanks. The remaining airships tried to flee, but they were all swiftly felled by lightning, and the remaining tanks were all stomped.

Lupa de-fused from Sparklypoo and returned to her normal size. Sparklypoo took out most of the laser statues on the outside, and busted down the castle doors before Lupa recalled it.

Surprisingly, there were no human or Koopa soldiers in the halls of the castle - it seemed that all of them had been in either the airship or tank fleets. Another surprising thing was that the castle contained no magma pits - instead, they were regular old pits, through which they could see the inner sun of Mykodia.

"That's still bullshit." Nash said. "Inner sun my ass. This isn't a Jules Verne book."

Lupa grabbed Phelous and Nash and flew up the central area, which bypassed most of the trap-laden floors. At the very top of the shaft was a red door with spikes on it, which signified a boss. It opened for them, and they walked through.

"Greetings."

Waiting for them, on a throne made of clay, was Lord Electriceye. He was in the classic villainous slouch, while holding a magic wand. Behind him was the TARDIS, along with a huge statue of a very feral-looking turtle-dragon with red hair.

"Have you ever wondered why Bowser always wanted to kidnap Peach in the games?" Electriceye asked.

"I think he just wanted to marry her or something." Lupa said.

"In this universe, him and his subjects were trapped in this hellish world. When they discovered a literal paradise above, it was only natural that they would crave it. And then they found a world above that... a literal Heaven.

"See, this Bowser is a piece of the Earth God."

"Called it." Phelous interrupted.

"He was instinctively drawn to the outer world, so that he could find and reunite with his other five pieces. But he conquered everything he came across, which drew the ire of the Sky Empress... so he kidnapped her. They forced him back to this castle, and the knights of the Sky Empress sealed him in stone."

"Okay, and what about you?" Lupa asked.

"The Pax Terra came to this world by chance, and became rather interested in the legend of the Earth God. Imagine, an infinite army of mindlessly loyal soldiers. They infiltrated the Sky Empress' cabinet, which is where I come in. We plan on using the Earth God to crush the Pax Terra and release the worlds they've conquered."

"Yeah, that's not gonna backfire on you or anything." Phelous said. "And we don't really care. Give us the TARDIS and you can have Sparklypoo."

"Ha." Electriceye pointed his wand at Lupa. "I know what you plan on doing next. I've read The Sagacious Saga."

"...what?"

"In my universe, this fic has been completed. After you kill me by invoking your next random power, you're going to go mad and devastate the entire universe."

"That raises some interesting questions." Nash said. "So you know you're going to fail, but you keep acting all smug regardless?"

"Remember how I said I expected three of you at Malus Tower? In the version of the fic I read, Film Brain was traveling with you. And I certainly didn't expect you to fuse with The Imprisoned. Things have been playing out differently, which means I have a chance to win!"

Electriceye flipped up his eyepatch and channeled the lightning through the magic wand, creating a burst of energy that floored all three of them. He then pointed the wand at the petrified Bowser and fired three magic rings at it, breaking the stone and revealing a layer of amber underneath.

"Alright, Great Demon King! Show me what you got!"

The amber shattered.

"-RRRRRR huh?" Bowser, who looked a lot more like a demon in this incarnation, looked around confused. "What happened to that knight? Who're you?"

"These three contain the essence of the Earth God. Go ahead and absorb it from them." Electriceye handed the magic wand to Bowser.

"Huh? You're an agent of the Sky, aren't you?" Bowser turned the wand on Electriceye and fired; the latter blocked the rings with an electric shield.

"You dare? I unsealed you, and you would attack me?" Electriceye ran toward the TARDIS, but fell to the ground from another blast of Bowser's wand.

"Gwa ha! I don't owe you a thing!" Bowser walked over to Electriceye and tried to squash his head, but he rolled to the side at the last second.

Meanwhile, Lupa had recovered from the paralysis before Phelous and Nash. She closed her eyes and felt the pulse of a god's heart within her. It desired to be reunited with the five other parts of it within this room.

"Oh really, huh?" Lupa absorbed the Earth God's essence from Phelous and Nash. She fused with Sparklypoo, gaining its essence as well. She didn't shift into Demise, but retained her normal form, albeit with hair of golden flame and an aura of white energy.

"Huh?" Bowser stared at Lupa, transfixed by her radiance. "You... give me your power."

"Nope! EARTH POWER!" Lupa raised her arms, blasting Bowser and Electriceye with unrestrained divine energy. Electriceye was instantly vaporized, and his share of the Earth God's essence (that he drained from Malus Tower) transferred to Bowser.

"Gwa ha ha ha! I feel great!" Bowser opened his mouth and shot fireballs at Lupa, but she deflected the shots with her aura. She then transferred some of her own essence to Nash and Phelous, invigorating them.

"Why are we even fighting him? We have the TARDIS right here, let's just leave." Phelous said.

"Because... actually, that's a good point." Lupa paralyzed Bowser with a high-voltage shock. They all walked toward the TARDIS, but Bowser recovered from the shock and slashed Lupa in the chest.

"No! I won't let you leave!" Bowser jumped on Lupa and tore out her throat, absorbing the essence within her. Nash and Phelous combined their magic and blasted Bowser with a Reaction Bomb, but he easily shrugged it off.

"Oh crap." Nash tried jumping out of the way, but Bowser used his newfound speed to pounce on top of Nash and rip his head off. Phelous opened a portal to the Plane of Infinite Phelouses, and they all bum-rushed Bowser, but to no avail. Bowser took off one of Phelous' arms and drained the essence from it... completing all six parts of the broken Earth God.

"YES! I FEEL IT!" Bowser laughed as he was engulfed by a white aura. A bolt of pure energy rocketed upwards, through the roof of the castle and right through both the Hidden Jungle and Mykodia into outer space.

The bolt of energy kept right on going until it hit Eldin, the second smaller sun in the solar system. The essence of the Earth God sealed in Mykodia was but its consciousness: its actual body had been turned into the artifical second sun.

And now, they were reunited...

...which the Pax Terra was counting on.

An enormous ship, roughly the size of Neptune, came through a portal that opened up. The newly-reborn Earth God, taking the shape of a horse-like creature with a thousand arms, attacked the ship.

But the Pax Terra ship easily repelled the Earth God's assault, and responded with its own. It trapped the Earth God in a shield of pure darkness, which was anathema to the light-aligned Earth God; not only that, but the dark shield had some clever phlebotinum that only made it stronger as the Earth God tried to break it.

And, just as soon as the ship appeared, it vanished with its prize.

Laying at the bottom of the world was two dead people and Phelous, who was only barely clinging on to life.

"Fuck." Phelous crawled toward the TARDIS, and into the bigger-on-the-inside engine room. He tried programming the TARDIS to go back a few minute to avert this disaster, but he unfortunately expired before he was able to throw the switch.

Well, so much for that.


	9. Chapter 9

This was it.

Phelous clutched what remained of his left arm. He stumbled over to the doors of the blue police box and forced them open. He was dripping blood all over the interior of the TARDIS, but he didn't have time to worry about that.

Lupa and Nash were both dead, and he'd been completely unable to do anything to stop it. He was missing an arm and rapidly bleeding out. The Earth God had been unsealed and captured by the Pax Terra, for use in their vague but no doubt nefarious goals. They'd screwed up massively, but fortunately, they had a time machine.

Phelous instinctively ran his fingers over the TARDIS control panel. All he needed was 20 minutes. If he went back too far, it could cause all sorts of time paradoxes and shit - but if he went back a little bit, to warn his past version about Electriceye's sneak attack, that would be fine.

His vision was fading. Phelous collapsed to the ground, spewing blood and vomit all over the TARDIS' floor. He couldn't move. He gathered up his last shred of energy and reached to the control panel, but his trembling hand fell to the ground.

Darkness.

It was over.

Allison...

...

Phelous felt something warm in his breast pocket. The rainbow flower that Lupa had given him all the way back in the first chapter was glowing. The flower exploded, revealing a small green mushroom that dissolved into Phelous' body.

Phelous got up. His left arm fully regenerated right before his eyes, and he was returned to full strength.

"1-Up Mushroom." Phelous commented. "Of course."

Phelous finished inputting the time and coordinates into the TARDIS, and threw the lever. The coordinates were exactly the same, so the present TARDIS telefragged the past TARDIS. There would still be two Phelouses running around, but he had a plan for that too.

"Huh?" Electriceye's jaw dropped as Phelous stepped through the TARDIS doors.

"You." Phelous' sarcastic, annoyed exterior had long since faded, replaced by tranquil fury. Though he'd lost the essence of the Earth God, the 1-Up Mushroom had given him some of his MP back. He'd make good use of that.

But first, the second Chekov's Gun fired. Phelous reached into his pocket and pulled out the Amulet of Winter, which would answer any question asked to it, but only once per person. Lupa had used it to discern the name and function of the Amulet, but Phelous had never gotten a chance to use it.

So he put it on, and asked it "If I kill Electriceye right now, will the time travel mechanics of this particular universe result in a reality-shattering paradox?"

The answer:

"No."

"Good." Phelous removed the amulet and put it back in his pocket.

"Where'd you-?" Electriceye stammered.

"The future. You killed my beloved and friend."

"No, I-"

"Die." Phelous created a long icicle spear and ran Electriceye through with it. Electriceye countered with a blast from his eye, but Phelous used Lupa's lightning redirection technique which he'd learned offscreen to negate that attack. He shoved the spear further into Electriceye's torso, then walked over to the clay throne and grabbed the magic wand.

"Wait, don't kill me! We can't let the Pax Terra-"

"Shut the fuck up." Phelous shoved the wand into Electriceye's mouth and activated it. The beam of energy completely vaporized his head and most of his torso.

Phelous pointed the magic wand at the sealed Bowser, but a voice interrupted him.

"Huh?"

Lupa, Nash and the past Phelous walked into the room to see the future Phelous and the headless corpse of Electriceye. Naturally, they were confused.

"Allison..." Future Phelous looked at them, and his unstoppable rage instantly melted away. "Oh God, Allison..."

"Okay, who are you?"

"I'm from about 20 minutes in the future." Tears were streaming down Future Phelous' face. "They killed both of you, and I was completely helpless. And your flower, it saved me..."

"Phelan..." Lupa walked over and tightly embraced Future Phelous. They stood there for at least a few minutes, until the stench of Electriceye ruined the mood.

"I don't know if I should be offended or not." Past Phelous said.

"Eh, it's still technically you." Nash said. "But I dunno, anything more than that might be kinda weird."

"Don't worry, it's okay." Future Phelous walked over to Past Phelous and put his arm on the latter's shoulder. Future Phelous dissolved into Past Phelous, creating a unified Phelous.

"Well, that was confusing." Phelous said. "Anyways, Electriceye's dead and we've got the TARDIS back. Mission complete and all that, or something."

"Yep." Lupa, Phelous and Nash stepped into the TARDIS and teleported away, leaving the petrified Bowser still sealed away.

* * *

><p>A distinct whirring sound pierced the relative silence of the quiet neighborhood. A few children throwing a baseball in a backyard looked up as a small blue box materialized on the lawn of a nearby house.<p>

"Ah, it's so good to be home!" Lupa stepped out of the TARDIS and stretched, and a wave of nostalgia hit her as the familiar scents of her home returned to her. They'd been traveling non-stop for at least a few months, and it was nice to finally be home... at least for a little while.

Phelous and Nash followed as they went into Lupa's house. A ninja leaped up from underneath the Welcome mat, but Lupa just threw him to the side, and he scampered off. More worrying was the fact that the door was unlocked; Lupa quietly opened the door and stepped in, preparing a Thunderpunch for the jaw of the unlucky bastard who'd broken in.

Lupa did a quick sweep of her place, but it didn't take her long to find the intruder. Her old friend Christopher Lee was sitting on the couch in her living room, stroking the quietly sleeping Checkers who had nestled at his side.

"Ah!" Christopher Lee exclaimed. "Lupa! I am sorry for barging into your home, but I needed a place to stay for a few days."

"Huh? Are you on the run or something?" Lupa asked.

"In case you forgot, the Pax Terra invaded Earth and took over." Nash said. "Wait a minute. I saw you die, so you're an alternate Lupa. Which means this is an alternate Earth."

"Yes, but you are correct: the Pax Terra has completely taken over a majority of the world's governments." Christopher Lee said sadly. Checkers jumped off of the couch and rubbed against Lupa's leg, purring loudly.

"And you're part of the resistance?" Phelous asked.

"Well, I am a dissenter, yes. For most people, their daily lives have not changed - the Pax Terra has not yet introduced any sweeping poltical or economic changes. However, they are systematically hunting down and either imprisoning and killing those who disagree with their rule."

"But there is some sort of resistance, right?"

"I wish I could say that there was an organized resistance, but they... have been very thorough. I've only managed to survive by running from place to place, and even then, they've been relentlessly tracking me."

"You know, I was kind of hoping we could at least relax for a few days before we went and fought Generic Earth Empire #126. But of course that's not going to happen." Phelous sighed. He walked over to the kitchen to fix himself a sandwich.

"So obviously, we need to give the boot to the Pax Terra." Lupa said. "Well, we don't have the manpower for an all-out battle, so we'll need to make do with guerilla tactics. We should start with attacking a minor power base-"

"Uh, we have a fully-functional time machine." Nash pointed out. "We could just, you know, go back to the initial invasion and stop them there."

"The Pax Terra's initial assault was over 30 simultaneous attacks all over the world. We couldn't stop them all." Christopher Lee said.

"And if we go back before that, no one will believe us." Lupa said.

"Okay, why don't we go to the Pax Terra's past and stop them before they unify?" Nash suggested.

"Paradoxes." Phelous said, as he walked into the living room with a double-decker bologna sandwich. "The TARDIS automatically resolves small time-loops, but wiping out a huge multi-dimensional empire like the Pax Terra would cause a timeline collapse and erase us all."

"And you know this... how?"

"The Amulet of Winter told me. Oh wait, no it didn't, the author just needed to handwave that away and put exposition into my mouth." Phelous took a bite from his sandwich.

"Right." Nash pondered for a moment.

But before they could come up with another solution, a distinct rumbling sound grew louder and louder. Lupa ran outside, and saw a regiment of clay golems marching toward her.

"That's not good." Lupa said. She ran back inside and yelled "Hey guys! We have a bit of a problem!"

"...That's more than a bit of a problem." Nash said as they all ran back outside. The golems were crudely humanoid, and somewhat taller than an average human. Their arms were disproportionately long, and they all wielded some sort of metal club-like weapon. On the other hand, they didn't look all that intelligent, or durable for that matter.

Lupa kicked off the battle by grabbing her infinite-ammo rocket launcher and firing into the crowd, taking out the first several lines of soldiers. But this stirred them into a frenzy, and they began charging at the four of them.

Nash whipped out his boomstick, but the ammo proved ineffective against them. So he raised a bunch of zombies and lobbed fireballs into the back of the army, while the zombies kept them occuiped at the front. Phelous helped out the zombies with doppelgangers from the Plane of Infinite Phelouses, and he became MegaPhelous and started squashing the golems under his feet.

"We're outnumbered!" Christopher Lee said as he threw a grenade into the army, sending a dozen golems flying. "We cannot win this battle!"

Lupa flew up a few hundred feet, and saw that the golem army was almost literally infinite. An unbroken line of golem soldiers stretched as far back as she could see, and she guessed that there were more on the way.

"That's... a lot. Okay guys, tactical retreat time! Nash! Phelous! Back to the TARDIS!" Lupa shouted. They all ran back to the TARDIS and dematerialized; the golems stopped their march, as they could no longer detect their designated target. They awaited further orders...


	10. Chapter 10

"Cut!"

Rob Walker, holding a camera, waved his arm around. The various producers of Channel Awesome stopped their mock fight scene and started milling about, some grabbing their scripts while others started chatting with one another.

Today was the first day of shooting, and they'd already been out here for over 8 hours. The 4th-year anniversary wasn't quite as intensive as Kickassia or Suburban Knights, but it was still going to be a tough shoot.

"Okay guys, back to work!" Rob shouted again. "Come on, it's getting dark, and we need to finish this."

A general murmur of displeasure came from the crowd, and they all got back into position.

"HA HA HA HA! FOOOOLS!" Spoony as Doctor Insano cackled. The various villains of Channel Awesome charged at their "heroic" counterparts; Linkara had rigged up some holographic emitters to represent the villains, so that they could film fight scenes like this without extensive chroma-key or CGI work.

The villains first engaged their heroic counterparts in fisticuffs, though the actual "fighting" was a bit goofy on purpose; they couldn't directly hit the holograms without ruining the effect, and it was a bit of a trademark to have intentionally bad fight scenes in the anniversary videos.

But as the heroes began to trade targets to better take advantage of their own strengths, something odd happened. In particular, Linkara fired his magic gun at Douchey, who was scripted to dodge the blast - but the hologram froze up, and the blast from the gun shorted out the holo-emitter. The other holo-villains seized up as well.

"Cut!" Rob shouted again. "Damn it Lewis, I thought you said they were programmed."

"They are!" Linkara protested. "It's probably just a glitch. I'll check with Nimue."

Linkara pulled out his Internet Reviewer morpher, which he'd refitted with a communicator to the AI of Comicron One.

"Is something wrong with the holo-emitters, Nimue?" Linkara said.

"ALERT. ALERT. I AM DETECTING ONE HUNDRED AND THREE GRAVITY WELLS WITHIN 700,000 KM OF EARTH." Nimue said. "BASED ON THE SIZE AND WAVEFORM PATTERNS, THEY APPEAR TO BE INTER-DIMENSIONAL PORTALS."

"Wait, what?" Linkara said in disbelief.

"Yeah, the Watchtower's picking them up too!" Angry Joe said, holding another communicator to his ear. "But what the hell are they?"

"ALERT. I AM DETECTING UNKNOWN ENTITIES AT THE SOURCE OF THE GRAVITY WELLS. PRELIMINARY SCANS SUGGEST THAT THEY ARE HEAVILY-ARMED SPACESHIPS."

"...spaceships?" Linkara wondered. "Do they match anything in Comicron One's database?"

"NEGATIVE. SHALL I ENGAGE THEM?"

"No, not yet. We'll let them make the first move. Keep me updated." Linkara put his morpher away.

"What the hell is going on here?" Doug said. "Interdimensional spaceships? Is this one of your storylines, Lewis?"

"What? No, of course not!" Linkara said angrily. "I'm going to beam up to Comicron One to try and contact them. I'll keep in contact with you guys through Joe."

But before Linkara could beam up, a huge-ass red laser ripped through the forest that they were filming in. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but the laser was followed by a number of portals opening up. Around 50 soldiers with strange uniforms and weaponry marched out, followed by a 10-foot-tall man dressed in a fancy uniform and hat.

"Attention!" the tall man, who appeared to be some sort of leader, said. The soldiers all aimed their weapons at the producers. "Members of the Channel of Awesome! We are the Glorious Army of the Pax Terra. You are a high-priority threat, and thus your rights have been waived."

The tall man pointed at one of his soldiers, who specifically took aim at Film Brain.

"As a gesture of kindness from Citizen Gore, we are taking you into custody rather than just eliminating all of you right now. Come with us, and we will not harm you... but resist, and we will not hesitate to shoot. Jendon, you may fire when ready."

The soldier who was aiming at Film Brain flipped a switch on his gun. Film Brain panicked and tried to run, but the soldier blasted him with a low-voltage energy shot, knocking him to the ground. The other soldiers surrounded the rest of the producers, and they made sure that their guns were on the lethal setting.

They began to lead the producers into the waiting portal, but before anyone could actually pass through the event horizon, the holo-emitters activated, and the villains rushed the soldiers. They naturally fired at the holograms, to no avail; but this was a vital distraction.

Linkara quick-morphed and took out a group of soldiers with his magic gun, while Joe blasted a few more with lightning. Nimue took the liberty of beaming up as many of the producers as she could, but the rest of the Pax Terra soldiers managed to completely vaporize several of them.

The survivors regrouped on Comicron One's bridge. Doug, Lindsay, Elisa, Linkara, Joe, Brad, Ralph, Nash, Todd, Sage and 8-Bit Mickey had survived; everyone else had unfortunately been lost in the battle. Linkara and Joe immediately went to work, while the others took a moment to mourn their fallen friends.

"Nimue! What's our status?" Linkara yelled.

"COMICRON ONE IS UNDER ATTACK, BUT I HAVE ACTIVATED THE VARIABLE TIMESHIFT SHIELD. I AM DETECTING THOUSANDS OF PORTALS OPENED ALL ACROSS THE WORLD, AND THE WARSHIPS ARE TAKING POSITIONS OVER POLITICALLY AND ECONOMICALLY-IMPORTANT CITIES."

"I see..." Linkara said. "Damn it. They caught us completely off guard..."

As everyone stood in silence, trying to figure out what to do next, a familiar whirring sound broke the tension. A familiar blue box materialized on the bridge of Comicron One, and Lupa, Phelous, Nash and Christopher Lee stepped out.

"What the!" everyone exclaimed in shock.

"Hi guys!" Lupa said. "Has the Pax Terra attacked yet?"

"They just did. But they just... killed you two." Brad said, pointing at Lupa and Phelous. Past Nash seemed nonplussed at seeing his future counterpart.

"Yeah, it's a long story." Lupa said.

"Suffice it to say that we are from the future." Christopher Lee said. "We have come up with a plan of attack on the Pax Terra homeworld, but we require more forces."

"Do you guys plan on dealing with these guys too?" Lindsay asked.

"Yep!" Lupa ran back into the TARDIS, and came back a few seconds later with Bowser's magic wand. In between Chapters 9 and 10, they'd gone back to Mykodia and drained the divine essence from the still-sealed Bowser.

"We have communed with a powerful spirit calling itself the Earth God. We have set it free, and it has agreed to help us defeat the Pax Terra. It will serve as both a distraction and the bulk of our forces, while the Comicron One and the Exceliator will serve as backup." Christopher Lee exposited. While he was talking, Nimue picked up another transdimensional portal; a garish red-and-purple ship came out of it.

"WE ARE IN POSITION." The slightly distorted voice of BURTON, the main AI of the Exceliator, came from a commlink inside the TARDIS.

"Got it." Phelous said. "Okay, let's get this show on the road."

"Are you sure this is gonna work?" Linkara asked.

"Of course it is!" Lupa said. "On our mark, get set... go!"

Lupa, Phelous, Nash and Christopher Lee placed their hands on the magic wand, transfering their divine essence into it. Lupa grabbed the Master Ball from her belt and attached it to the magic wand, and teleported both out into space; Sparklypoo emerged from the ball, absorbing the divine essence and becoming a huge golden equine-like being with a thousand arms.

The Earth God severed about 100 of its own arms, each of which formed into a city-sized golden humanoid. The golems immediately went after the Pax Terra fleet, while the Exceliator backed them up with Piercing Missiles that completely ignored the ships' shields.

While the main fleet was preoccupied, the Comicron One disengaged its timeshift shield and headed toward Earth. Its extremely precise targetting systems allowed it to messily kill individual Pax Terra soldiers on the surface, while the Angry Joe Watchtower dispatched fighters to help all across the globe.

To their surprise, the battle went relatively smoothly; though a number of AJ Army fighters were lost, and the damage to the surface was still fairly significant, the combined forces of Comicron One, the Exceliator and the Earth God absolutely massacred the Pax Terra's fleet. After being cut down to roughly 40% of their starting invasion fleet, the rest of the fleet wisely decided to make a tactical retreat. The surface forces suffered even worse casualties.

A few hours later, the last of the Pax Terra soldiers had retreated. They would likely try another invasion at a later date, but they were already working on a way to stop them. In the meantime, the governments of the world were discussing what to do, and Linkara and Lupa were standing on the bridge of the Exceliator.

"IT IS GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN, LINKARA." BURTON said. "THOUGH I SUPPOSE YOU DO NOT KNOW WHO I AM."

"No, I have no idea." Linkara said.

"PUT SIMPLY, I AM ON LOAN FROM AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE. SPONBY SENDS HIS REGARDS, BY THE WAY."

"...Sponby? You mean Spoony?" Linkara asked.

"It's another long story." Lupa said. "Jesus sent me to fight with an AU Spoony who'd become an all-devouring god thing, and we defeated a bunch of robots and an evil watermelon. He's still roaming around somewhere, and we managed to find him and ask for some reinforcements. There's a few more ships waiting for the main assault on Pax Terra Earth."

"...Right. But don't you think we should at least try and settle this diplomatically?" Linkara said. "I mean, from what you told me offscreen, they don't seem all that bad... and yeah, they've done a lot of damage to us, but we've done a lot of damage to them too. I'll help you out if they declare war, but..."

"Eh, they'll probably handwave that away next chapter." Lupa said dismissively. "Anyways, I'll stay in orbit and watch for more ships. You can go back to reviewing comic books or whatever."

"Sounds good." Linkara teleported away. Lupa sat at the Exceliator's bridge for a while, until Phelous came out.

"I barely got any lines in this chapter." Phelous complained.

"Yeah, but we still did most of the important stuff." Lupa said. "And my name's still in the title, so we'll probably get the spotlight back in the next two chapters."

"Uh, Allison? Your name is in the title. I'm the unfunny comic relief, remember? God I hate this fic."

"Yeah, me too."

Lupa and Phelous went to the observation deck, and shared a few tender moments above their home planet. It would be over soon...


	11. Chapter 11

Nimue detected another Pax Terra portal attempting to force itself open near the UN Building in New York. The anti-portal network they'd managed to rig up was doing its job admirably; though they couldn't stop the ships from warping in outside of Earth's orbit, they could at least stop a mass transit of ground troops. Nimue only detected two targets on the other side of the portal; Linkara made an exception for them, and the portal opened and closed.

Two men in business suits stepped out of the portal. They walked up the steps of the UN Building, to the waiting Allan Tete, former President of the Olympics and current Secretary-General of the UN. Tete stood stoically as the two men, who identified themselves as Citizen Gore and Citizen Mandela respectively, walked toward him.

"We have come on behalf of the First Citizen to sign a peace treaty." Citizen Gore pulled a treaty out of his suit jacket.

"Peace?" Tete scoffed. "We have been in contact with the other worlds your forces have conquered. They have all told us the same story: you attack without warning, you subjugate their populace and rigidly restrict their rights and technological development. The leaders of this Earth have unanimously voted against signing your treaty, and in favor of war."

"You believe yourself to be rather sagacious." Citizen Mandela remarked.

"OH! HE SAID IT!" Lupa said, looking on the scene from afar.

"But you will regret spitting in our face." Citizen Gore ripped up the treaty. "By the power of the First Citizen, I am declaring your entire world to be Anti-Pax. We will not show any mercy this time."

Both men attempted to open a portal to a waiting squadron of soldiers, but Comicron One's shield did its job. Instead, a global coalition of this Earth's soldiers, led by Bennet the Sage, surrounded the two Citizens and took them into custody.

"The Wolf Brigade is at your service, sir." Bennet saluted to Tete. "Will there be anything else?"

"Yes." A pained grimace crossed Tete's face. "Get ready for war."

With that order, Comicron One dropped the anti-portal shield. The rest of the Earth fleet, consisting of the four Exceliator-class warships (all filled with squadrons of fighter jets retrofitted for space combat), a number of giant robots and the Earth God, rallied behind the TARDIS, piloted by Lupa and Phelous. They initiated a mass-scale teleport, warping the entire fleet into the space outside the AU Earth controlled by the Pax Terra.

Waiting for them was three Deus Est Machina-class ships, each exactly the same as the Neptune-sized ship that captured the Earth God back in Chapter 8. These ships would have easily overpowered the entire Earth fleet, but they had all been badly damaged by certain other events; they were still quite powerful, but nowhere near a challenge for the Earth ships.

But this is Lupa's story!

"I bet I can beat up the First Citizen!" Lupa said.

"Yeah, because it's not like he has hundreds of subordinates who could easily run the Pax Terra in his absence." Phelous said sarcastically.

"But you don't deny that he's the most powerful?"

"Of course he is. Asskicking equals authority and all that shit."

"Well I'm still gonna beat him up."

Lupa had the TARDIS materialize in front of the Palace Terra, an enormous fortress of metal and stone patrolled by hundreds of thousands of clay golems and human soldiers. The offscreen battle in orbit raged above, lighting up the sky with explosions and flaming wreckage. Floating above the castle was a cage of dark energy, holding the imprisoned Earth God.

"But we freed the Earth God." Lupa pointed out.

"It got time-duplicated somehow." Phelous said, looking at some readings on a control panel. "The TARDIS can use its magical time-loop-resolving powers to retcon it, but it'll take some time.

"Cool." Lupa exited the TARDIS, immediately alerting the sentries to their presence.

The humans with guns fired their disintegrator rays at her, but she blocked them all with a lightning shield. Phelous came back and froze her lightning shield into an extremely shiny ice shield, reflecting the beams back at them and vaporizing 90% of the humans. The golems, barely intelligent enough to wield clubs, all bum-rushed the two.

Since they were immune to lightning, Lupa conjured her infinite-ammo rocket launcher again and let 'em rip into the golems. Phelous created a complex-looking sculpture made of glasslike ice, then fired his eye lasers into them; the sculpture strengthened the beams and diffused them at the same time, spraying thousands of beams outward and killing even more.

The imprisoned Earth God cried out in pain. Another portal opened near the TARDIS, and an endless supply of golems poured out of it. Phelous summoned some clones; though they lacked his ice magic, they still had eye lasers, which were fairly effective. But the horde had no end in sight...

"MORLOCKS GO!"

A rallying cry came from the east. Dozens of hover tanks and hundreds of soldiers wielding disintegration guns charged in over a hill, blasting the shit out of the golem army. The well-muscled 8-foot-tall man at the frontlines led the charge, getting right in the thick of the battle and using a shotgun-like spread on his gun to take out large swaths of golems.

"Who the hell are you?" Lupa asked while fighting her way through the golems.

"Allison? It's you, isn't it! Didn't expect to see you here!"

"Huh?" The man's voice was familiar. And even a split-second glance at his face was enough to remind her of someone...

"...Mathew?"

"The one and only!" Film Brain said while ripping a golem apart with his bare hands (his gun ran out of ammunition).

"What the hell happened to you?"

"I ended up here after we fought Hitler in the past. The Resistance took me in, and I eventually got control of the 118th Division. MORLOCKS GO!"

"MORLOCKS GO!" the soldiers cheered over the din of battle. Some soldiers threw Film Brain and Lupa more disintegration guns, and they went to town on the zombies. Phelous got one offscreen too.

"Sir! We will handle this battle!" a generic redshirt soldier said to Film Brain. "Get to the Palace!"

"Jolly good! We'll take out the First Citizen before teatime!" Film Brain laughed as he, Lupa and Phelous vaporized their way through the horde. The doors were tightly locked, but their all-purpose disintegration guns also turned out to be pretty effective lockpicks. More golems were on the other side, but they went down just as easily as the horde outside.

More human soldiers showed up as they made their way through the palace. Unlike the generic mooks outside, these one were wearing reflective armor which neutralized the disintegration guns; unfortunately for them, both Phelous and Lupa had magic, and Film Brain's physical strength (the Pax Terra had pretty extensive bio-enhancements, hence his new stature) was more than enough to shatter their armor, bones and everything in between.

It wasn't until some strange turtle-like minions, led by a larger turtle-dragon, that they encountered some actual resistance.

"Gwa ha ha!" Bowser laughed. "You should've killed me when you had the chance! The First Citizen's powered me up, and I feel better than ever! Once I'm done wiping the floor with you three, I'll take Mykodia unopposed."

"Go on, guys." Phelous rolled up his sleeves. "I've got a score to settle with this guy."

"Bring it, red shirt!" Bowser roared. His Koopa Troop began to swarm around Phelous, but Bowser waved them away; he'd deal with this himself.

Bowser's surprising speed allowed him to easily get behind Phelous and attempt an instant-kill decapitation, but Phelous reacted just as quickly by freezing Bowser's right arm. The added weight threw Bowser off, and he whiffed the attack by a mile; Phelous took advantage with a point-blank Optic Blast to Bowser's chest, knocking him on his back. Phelous created an icicle spear and jumped on top of Bowser, but he was thrown off as Bowser ducked into his shell and began spinning; the force behind it generated a small tornado, sucking Phelous back in and slamming him against the hard spikes on Bowser's shell.

Phelous was fortunately superhumanly tough, so he wasn't instantly killed by the Demon King's attack. He was bruised and bleeding, yes, but nowhere near out for the count. As Bowser returned to a secure and upright position, Phelous covered the floor, walls and ceiling in a thick frost, severely reducing traction for everyone but himself. He then started ricocheting Optic Blasts off the walls and floor, making them somewhat unpredictable; Bowser attempted to dodge them, but he slipped and fell on his ass, taking another couple of shots to the back of his shell and burning a pretty large hole in it.

"Argh!" Bowser yelped in pain. He ducked back into his shell and turned Phelous' trick against him, using the combination of ice physics and unstoppable momentum to bounce around the floor unpredictably. Phelous (who still had perfect traction on the ice) sidestepped and leapfrogged over Bowser, firing another round of lasers into the wound on Bowser's shell.

"You know, you have fire breath..." Phelous pointed out.

"Don't mock me!" Bowser deeply inhaled, and blew a scorching-hot flame that melted almost all of the frost. He charged at Phelous like a bull, clearly attempting to impale him on his razor-sharp horns. Phelous whipped up an ice barrier and stood his ground, but he miscalculated; Bowser easily smashed through the barrier and delivered a crushing headbutt to Phelous' abdomen, as his horns fortunately missed. Even still, it threw Phelous against the wall on the other side of the room, and he slumped to the ground.

"Ha!" Bowser slowly walked over to Phelous' stunned figure. "So before I kill you, what sauce would you recommend with your roasted carcass? Those knights were quite tasty with ketchup, but for you... I'm thinking something a bit more fancy."

"...You ate Mario and Luigi?" Phelous wondered, still dazed from the blow.

"Of course! Those pathetic knights didn't stand a chance against me, and they knew it! Course, they had some sort of backup plan that sealed me away once I killed 'em, but at least I got to enjoy feasting upon their flesh!"

Bowser took a deep breath, and exhaled a low-temperature flame that would keep his opponent nice and juicy. Phelous immediately snapped out of his stupor and threw an ice blast at Bowser's mouth, quenching his flames for the moment.

"Ah, so you've still got a bit of fight in you!" Bowser chuckled. "Come on, show me what you've got!"

Bowser's entire body burst into flames, and he opened his gaping mouth and swallowed them all. He breathed out an intense white-blue flame, which was hot enough to melt the entire room they were in. Phelous raised another ice shield, but it was just barely enough to protect him from the blaze. The rest of the Koopa Troop evacuated, though many of them were burnt to a crisp in the attempt.

"You know, if you're going to threaten to eat someone, it's a lot more threatening if you're deadpan and creepy. When you're all over-the-top and hammy, it just comes off as something you'd say to make yourself seem more arbitrarily evil to the audience." Phelous said.

"Thank you! I'll remember that when I come across my next victim." Bowser said with an obvious false politeness. "Now then, kindly DIE!"

"I've done enough of that, thank you very much!" Phelous focused the ice shield into a Hadoken-like blast of ultracold air, colliding with Bowser's breath. The two attacks met in midair, sending out shockwaves of shadowy energy that destroyed what was left of the room. Bowser ignited himself again, adding even more power to his flames of destruction, but Phelous similarly intensified his beam attack.

They were thrown out of their stalemate when the floor collapsed beneath them. Phelous fell on the hard ground, but Bowser's fiery body kept on melting through the floors of the Palace and even through the planet itself. Once Phelous recovered, he peered down the hole; it seemed to go on without end, and he didn't think that this particular Bowser could survive the heat and pressure of the inner core... or so he hoped.

But that was done. Phelous ran back up to catch up with Film Brain and Lupa.

Speaking of which, those two had plowed through more red shirts, though their disintegration guns had long since run out; Lupa instead had her infinite rockets, while Film Brain wisely stood back.

Until something caught her rockets and threw them back at her. Both Lupa and Film Brain were thrown against a wall, and a man in a business suit walked out of the debris, telekinetically holding two of Lupa's rockets.

"Hello." Citizen Gore said. He threw both rockets at them, but Film Brain grabbed them and threw them out a window, taking out a few more golems in the still-raging battle below.

"You." Film Brain growled. Citizen Gore, the leader of the Ministry of Peace and Prosperity, was the most active in wiping out the Resistance, and he loved every second of it; this man was more widely hated than the First Citizen.

"Yes, me." Citizen Gore levitated Film Brain's body, putting it in the symbolic pose of Jesus on the cross. "Your attack is failing. The Earth God gives us an infinite army, and your forces will eventually fall."

"Stop with the villain talk." Lupa fired a bolt of lightning at Gore, shocking him and causing him to drop Film Brain.

"Go ahead, Lupa." Film Brain walked over to Gore and picked him up by the throat. "I'll handle this scum."

"Okay, good luck." Lupa went onward by herself, while Film Brain's meaty fingers choked the life out of his hated enemy. Gore tried to telekinetically pry his fingers off, but Film Brain's grip held tight.

"I'll... give you... power." Gore sputtered.

"No thanks." Film Brain dropped Gore, then grabbed his head and ripped it right off of his body. Film Brain threw it out the window into the masses below. His position was now open, and the Pax Terra would no doubt replace him with someone who hated the Resistance even more... but hopefully, they'd be able to take down the entire empire before that happened.

"Oh sure, you get to fight an evil Al Gore, while I have to fight a slightly-threatening turtle thing." Phelous said, having caught up with Film Brain.

"Yes, but it was far more satisfying. Come on, let's catch up with Lupa."

The two of them kept running up the red stairs while creepy organ music played. Phelous was about to make a comment about it, but he decided not to.


	12. Chapter 12

"Hello, Allison."

Lupa stood in a room furnished like the Oval Office. The room was dark, obscuring the figure in the chair in front of her.

"So you're the First Citizen, huh?" Lupa said. "What, is the Pax Terra too poor to afford some decent lighting?"

"I just wanted to set up a dramatic reveal." The figure got up and clapped their hands; the lights came on, and Lupa realized exactly who this was.

"Come on!" Lupa complained. "Evil clones? We're really going with evil clones?"

"Well, yeah." First Citizen Lupa, who we'll call Obscura for clarity, said. "Who better to rule a utopia than a God Mode Sue?"

"It's still pretty weak."

"Yeah yeah. So Lupa, do you remember when you died in the Heart of Machines?"

"...what? I didn't die there." Lupa said. She tried to remember exactly how she got out of that battle. All she could remember is that she went there and fought alongside Sponby and some bald dude, and going back home immediately afterward... but not what happened in between.

"Yes, you're realizing it now. Sponby absorbed you at the end of that battle, along with the rest of the Heart of Machines. We managed to recover a few of the GMF's Deus Est Machinae, and we reconstructed you from data contained within... but we couldn't recover your original powers."

"Uh, thanks I guess, but what was the point of bringing me back?"

"We wanted your power. As I said, who better to rule a perfect empire than a God Mode Sue?" Obscura sat back down and folded her arms. "We let you go once we realized how belligerent you were, and instead decided to keep tabs on you in case you found something useful for our purposes."

"Seems needlessly complex." Lupa said.

"I've got a lot of time on my hands." Obscura admitted. "But while I'm impressed that you made it all the wat here, I can't let you leave alive. It's time to go back to sleep, Lupa."

Obscura threw off her suit, revealing a purple tank top and white pants underneath. She pressed a button on her desk, and the entire Oval Office fell into an endless void... only to land in a brightly-lit arena several minutes later.

"Round 1. Fight!" an unseen announcer said. Obscura flash-stepped behind Lupa and kicked her in the back of the knee; Obscura conjured a pair of consecrated mythril sais and thrust them downward, but Lupa somersaulted and dodged the sais, which came down with enough force to be embedded into the stone floor.

Lupa countered with a full-rotation roundhouse kick, which Obscura dodged by backflipping. Lupa focused some lightning in her foot, sending out a wave of electricity that forced Obscura to leap into the air and do a backward somersault. Lupa grabbed one of the sais and threw it at Obscura, nailing her in the left shoulder.

"Bitch!" Obscura ripped the sai out of her shoulder and threw it away. She rushed Lupa and started firing minor Ki blasts; Lupa deflected most of them with Thunderpunches, but a couple hit her and the surrounding ground, kicking up a huge dust cloud.

Obscura, who had watched every episode of Dragon Ball Z in her downtime, wasn't fooled; she charged up for a Kamehameha, which she threw into the dust cloud. But Lupa was just as savvy, having charged up a powerful Thunderpunch with which to deflect the Kamehameha back. Obscura blocked it, but Lupa ran in and delivered a lightning Shoryuken right to the face, following it up with an aerial Hurricane Lightning Kick that slammed Obscura face-first into the ground.

"Not so tough now, are you?" Lupa taunted. She jumped in the air and slammmed down with a flying knee; Obscura rolled out of the way, but the force of Lupa's knee turned an entire circular part of the arena into a sea of rubble. The jagged rocks scratched Lupa as she climbed out of the pit, but Obscura dragged her back down.

Lupa released a low-voltage sphere of electricity, but Obscura plowed through it with another Ki blast. The blast reduced some of the rubble into a fine powder, further obscuring their vision. Obscura used her ability to sense Ki to attack Lupa from all sides; Lupa blocked as many of the blows as she could, but they only further opened the wounds she'd taken from the shrapnel.

Remembering that she could fly, Lupa flew out of the pit, with Obscura still holding on to her leg. Lupa flailed her legs in an attempt to shake Obscura off, but she held tight; Obscura fired another Ki blast into the back of her leg, causing both of them to fall back onto the ground.

"Do you have any last words?" Obscura said as she grabbed Lupa by the throat.

"Yeah..." Lupa whispered. "Look into my eyes."

"Hmm?" Obscura took a long look into Lupa's eyes...

"LIGHTNING EYES!" Lupa fired a bolt of lightning from her eyes, finally getting around Obscura's defenses and shocking her. Obscura let go of Lupa's neck, and Lupa focused what remained of her MP into a palm-strike to Obscura's chest.

"Ghh!" Obscura spat out blood as she hit the ground. Lupa's attack had left a bloody, slightly charred wound covering most of her torso.

"Stop whining, you'll live." Lupa said.

"I would... but the Founder won't like my failure. Ha ha ha... see you in Hell." Obscura smiled as she dissolved into a thick golden mist.

"Wow, a second phase to the final boss fight? What a shocking and unexpected twist!" Lupa said. She reached out to the golden mist, absorbing it into her body and restoring her back to full health. How convenient.

But then, the ground shook. An enormous figure walked out of the darkness, and Lupa couldn't help but laugh at it. It could best be described as a chimerataur: it was a human head, arms and torso, attached to the back of a lion (with the lion head in a very suggestive place), its fingers and toes were snake heads, it had two sets of wings on the man's shoulders and the lion's back, and its tail was a 50-foot-long boa constrictor. And it was about 300 feet tall.

"HELLO, LUPA." The chimerataur's voice was deafening and naturally echoing. "THANK YOU FOR DISPOSING OF A WORTHLESS CLONE."

"You're welcome!" Lupa said. "So you're the founder of the Pax Terra, huh?"

"YES. IN YOUR WORLD, YOU KNOW ME AS JACKIE CHAN."

"...buh?" Lupa looked at the chimerataur's face: sure enough, despite the size difference, he looked exactly like Jackie Chan.

"IN YOUR UNIVERSE, I PURSUED THE PATHS OF MARTIAL ARTS AND ACTING. IN THIS UNIVERSE, I WAS BORN TO UNITE THE WORLD AND SPREAD OUR PERFECTION TO THE ENTIRE MULTIVERSE. THE EARTH GOD HAS BLESSED ME WITH THIS FORM, AND I WILL USE IT TO STOP ANYONE WHO OPPOSES US."

"Yeah yeah, generic villain monologue. Come on, let's rumble!"

"I wILL CRUSH YOU UNDERNEATH MY HEEL!" Chanmera pointed his fingers at Lupa, firing a different beam of elemental magic from each finger. But his size also meant that he was extremely slow, and Lupa easily dodged by flying upward. Chanmera flapped both sets of wings, creating a gale-force wind that blew Lupa backwards, but his aim sucked so much that he missed with all of his beams again.

Lupa surrounded herself in an electrical shield and flew at Chanmera at mach speed. Unfortunately, Chanmera's hide was incredibly tough, and even her lightning shield did little more than singe a bit of hair. He reached down and grabbed her with his titanic hand, but her lightning shield proved too painful to touch.

Lupa flew out of Chanmera's grasp and headed right at his eye, but he too had eye beams; though they were relatively weak, they were enough to stop Lupa dead in her tracks, allowing him to blast her with a fire beam from his finger.

"I STOLE THE EYES FROM YOUR PRECIOUS PHELOUS!" Chanmera boasted. Lupa's lightning shield failed, and she began to fall; Chanmera swallowed her whole in one of his snake fingers.

Lupa woke up in the snake's mouth. She dodged its thrashing tongue, and decided to venture farther into its throat; but rather than a standard esophagus, the snake just... ended a few dozen feet in. But sitting on a pedestal was a large hunk of magic rock on a pedestal. Chanmera stimulated the crystal, causing it to glow with fiery energy but Lupa grabbed it off the pedestal and used it to pierce through Chanmera's skin, creating an escape route.

"Looking for this?" Lupa flew upward and blasted Chanmera with a blast from the fire crystal. Chanmera proved to be weak to fire, and the fire beam left a nasty-looking burn on his arm. Lupa then charged the fire crystal with her own lightning, creating a new Combination Attack.

"PLASMA STORM!" Lupa blasted Chanmera with a wide-angle beam of superheated ionized gas, simultaneously shocking and burning his upper chest. Chanmera flailed his arms, and a lucky shot swatted Lupa down like a fly, causing her to drop the fire crystal.

"DIE." Chanmera raised his massive foot and brought it down, but a large humanoid made up of smaller humans swooped in and grabbed the foot, shouldering it before it could make a Lupa sandwich.

"Need some help?" Film Brain said from atop MegaPhelous. MegaBrainolous fired a disintegration eye beam through Chanmera's foot, and he recoiled as if he stepped on a pin. Lupa ran over and grabbed the fire crystal again, and she combined her power with MegaBrainolous...

"TRIPLE TECH! PLASMA TURBOLASER!"

A miniature Death Star materialized at eye level with Chanmera, and it fired a plasma laser right into his eyes. The blast lit his eye sockets on fire and melted a significant portion of his brain, causing him to rampage blindly; Lupa only barely avoided being stomped on, saved from certain death by Film Brain.

"NO! I WILL NOT DIE, NOT YET." Chanmera's massive body melted into tons of black goo, but they saw a human-sized figure escape from the mass and into a portal of some sort. The arena began to collapse around them, and Lupa grabbed Film Brain and Phelous and tried to escape; but an impenetrable force field appeared around the outside of the arena, and it began to shrink.

Just before they were about to be crushed, a blue box swooped in and saved them again.

"You forgot me, you bastards!"

Nash and Christopher Lee sat at the controls of the TARDIS.

"Sorry, I just thought you would want to go back home!" Lupa said.

"Well I was, but then this guy here told me you were going to fight the First Citizen!" Nash said. "I was going to come in and give him a piece of my mind, but of course, you just had to hog all the glory."

"Her name's in the title." Phelous pointed out.

"If we are done bickering, the TARDIS is reporting an X-level time paradox in the works." Christopher Lee said. "The source appears to be at the center of this universe, before it began."

"X-level?" Lupa asked.

"Enough to wipe out everything in this universe. The TARDIS can hold it off long enough to allow us to reverse it, but we have precious little time. How ironic." Christopher Lee mused.

"Well let's go!"

Nash set the destination, and the TARDIS dematerialized. They reappeared in the pure void before the beginning of the universe; an infinitely-small, dense and bright light was just hanging out in pre-creation, though it was being stopped from exploding by a Deus Est Machina.

"Jackie Chan's in there." Lupa said, using her innate Sue-sense to detect it. Naturally, this got quizzical looks from the rest of her team, but she had no time to explain as the Deus Est Machina began barraging them with cannon fire.

"Where's the weapons on this thing?" Nash asked.

"Huh? We don't have any weapons." Lupa said.

"Oh, that's just wonderful."

Before the TARDIS' shields failed, it dematerialized and reappeared at the main bridge of the Deus Est Machina. Lupa, Phelous, Film Brain, Nash and Christopher Lee all stepped out of the TARDIS, marching on to meet their ultimate enemy at the beginning of time.

Sure enough, a regular-sized Jackie Chan, dressed in a white gi, was waiting for them at the end of a hallway. He smiled as they walked in.

"I shouldn't be surprised that you followed me here." Chan said. "But before we inevitably duel to the death, I'd like to tell you why we're here."

"Yes, tell us your villainous plan so we can stop it." Phelous said.

"The being you call Sponby is a threat to the entire multiverse. We have attempted to stop him multiple times; The Dark one was just our latest attempt, and that failed spectacularly. At this point, we cannot defeat him with physical force alone... forcing me to resort to the most horrifying weapon I can think of.

"Once I give the order, the singularity that causes the Big Bang in this universe will be snuffed out. Naturally, this will create a paradox that will destroy this universe, as well as any others that we have contacted. We planned on using you, Lupa, to draw Sponby in so that he would be caught in it... but our cloning process was incomplete, and you lacked the power to serve as a proper beacon."

"That's horrifying!" Film Brain said. "It's not just destruction, but... you'd erase hundreds of universes to take out one foe?"

"It is a last resort that I did not intend to use, unless all other plans failed." Chan said sadly. "But we have no choice. If Sponby absorbs them, they will be gone forever... at least our weapon will eventually allow for a new Big Bang to replace the old universe with a new one."

"There is no possible justification for a weapon of that caliber." Christopher Lee said. "We can find another way. Call off your men."

"You and your resistance have given us no choice. We will all perish in nonexistence, and you are to blame. If you feel that you can stop me, then go ahead and try... but it is already too late."

Lupa stepped forward. Everyone else took a step forward, but Lupa turned around and held out her arms.

"You guys get back to the TARDIS. Warn everyone at the battle in Pax Terra to get the hell out of this universe. I can stop this guy."

"Allison-"

"Don't worry, Phelan. I'm the winner of the Olympics! I defeated The Master! I'm the God Mode Sue! A ridiculous concept like Evil Emperor Jackie Chan doesn't hold a candle to my sheer Sue-ness."

Everyone else began to retreat, but Phelous took one last look at the love of his life.

"I'll come back for you, Allison. I'll... I'll come back for you." Phelous said, as tears streamed down his face. He ran after the other three, leaving Lupa and Chan alone.

"The end of all things is nigh." Chan said solemnly, as if he was in mourning. He repeated Obscura's first action, flash-stepping behind Lupa and kicking her in the back of the knee. But Lupa was prepared this time; she grabbed his leg and spun around, throwing him against a wall.

Chan rebounded off the wall and dived at Lupa, bombarding her with Ki blasts. Lupa grabbed a shard of the fire crystal that she pocketed and deflected each blast with streams of plasma, only for Chan to charge right through and punch her in the stomach.

Lupa managed to Thunderpunch Chan away, but she doubled over from the pain of Chan's punch shortly afterward.

"That's a technique I learned from the school of Hokuto Shinken." Chan said. "That attack struck several of your pressure points. Your stomach will explode in roughly 30 seconds."

"Bullshit." Lupa got back up, still clutching her stomach. "I won't die from a single punch."

"We'll wait and see."

Lupa charged at Chan, electrifying her fists and legs, and swung at him. Chan blocked the punch and redirected the lightning through his right index finger, directing it at the wall. Lupa shoved the fire crystal right in his face and activated it; while Chan did manage to dodge the fire beam, it did leave a small burn on his left cheek.

"Not bad." Chan said. "But your technique is sloppy. You've clearly trained, but you've been relying on your strength and speed too much." He grabbed Lupa's arm and dislocated her shoulder.

Lupa spat blood in Chan's face, blinding him with all the colors of the rainbow. She conjured a pair of holy mythril sais identical to Obscura's pair and shoved them both in Chan's lungs. He staggered back while gasping... but he quickly retained his composure, and grabbed the hilts of the sais and calmly removed them. The open wounds quickly healed.

"4... 3... 2... 1. Goodbye."

Lupa's stomach exploded in a gory mess, destroying most of her stomach and intestines in the process. Her eyes rolled up in the back of her head, and she fell on the ground, dead.

"Forgive me." Chan kneeled down and said a short prayer for his opponent. He didn't know if Heaven or Hell would survive through a time paradox, but he sincerly hoped that her soul would be judged worthy.

Chan grabbed a communicator attached to his belt and pressed a button on it.

"Deploy the Weapon."

"Yes sir." a muffled voice said back. The Deus Est Machina shuddered as over half of its mass, including the engine, was jettisoned into the singularity. The Deus Est Machina's engine was a biotechnomagical mass that violated so many laws of physics that it wasn't even funny; when combined with the reality-bending singularity, the two opposing forces simply canceled each other out.

Chan felt his body being ripped apart as the universe unmade itself. To his surprise, Lupa began to stir; she got to her feet, and with a hefty dose of willpower, the gaping wound in her torso healed.

"The laws of the universe mean nothing!" Lupa proclaimed. "And with no universe, there's no laws!"

"Indeed." Chan assumed a defensive position. "But it's only a matter of time. Even willpower cannot hold you together in a lawless universe."

"But it'll be enough for me to kick your sorry ass!"

Hundreds of doppelgangers of Lupa appeared around Chan, and they all proceeded to gang up on him. He fought some of them off, but the sheer number of Lupas beat him down. He responded by blasting them all with a massive Ki explosion.

The Deus Est Machina disintegrated around them as the chaos of the pre-universe ripped it apart atom by atom. Chan and Lupa only held on with their respective wills, but even they had to pour almost everything they had into staying stable. Lupa's arm began to disintegrate, so she sacrificed it for the potential energy it contained, then directed all of that energy at Chan.

He blocked it with a Ki shield, but the concentration required to maintain the shield resulted in him losing part of his face and both of his feet. Lupa pressed the attack, kicking him in what remained of his face; he blocked the kick, and responded by completing ripping Lupa's leg off.

Lupa regrew both of her limbs, and she created a couple of localized atomic explosions in front of her. Chan created an impenetrable shield, at the cost of more of his body; he tried regenerating his limbs from nothing, but Lupa punched him with several black holes before he could do so.

"No!" Chan screamed out into the void. He put everything he had into a last-ditch attack, focusing purely on destroying Lupa. His body was ripped apart, but Lupa lost most of her body, and her willpower was fading fast; she wasn't able to regenerate her lost limbs.

The emptiness of uncreation tore her apart, but Lupa drew as much energy as she could toward her. Darkness became light, and it exploded outward...

* * *

><p>Phelous stood on the bridge of the Exceliator. Nash and Christopher Lee had been returned to their proper times; Film Brain had gone back to the Pax Terra Earth, to finish up with the fight against the Pax Terra. With the destruction of Obscura and Jackie Chan, the seal on the Earth God had been broken, and it was only a amtter of time before the rest of the empire fell.<p>

"I'VE COMPLETED A PRELIMINARY SCAN. THE UNIVERSES AFFECTED BY THE PAX TERRA'S PARADOX WEAPON SHOW NO DISCREPANCIES WITH THE DATA IN MY BANKS."

"And what about Allison?" Phelous asked.

"THE TIMELINES OF THOSE UNIVERSES ARE EXTREMELY FRAGILE. WE CANNOT GO BACK IN TIME TO RETRIEVE HER WITHOUT RISKING A TOTAL MULTIVERSAL COLLAPSE. HOWEVER, I DO DETECT HER PRESENCE IN THE BACKGROUND RADIATION OF ALL AFFECTED UNIVERSES."  
>"...I'll find her." Phelous said. "She's out there somewhere. I know it."<p>

"THE PROBABILITY OF THAT BEING TRUE IS MINIMAL."

"Yeah, I know the odds, but this is a fanfic. Obviously, if it's a million-to-one chance, it's absolutely true. Actually, that's not even limited to fanfics, it's just a fiction convention in general."

"...I WILL BEGIN SCANNING."

Phelous stared out into space, looking at the unfamiliar stars. He had no idea where he was, or where Lupa was, but he'd find her. He had access to the entirety of time and space, and the power that the Earth God had given him made him effectively immortal. He had all the time in the multiverse. He would find her, no matter what it took.


End file.
